


Moment to Arise

by Aspiring_Eccentric



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale's Bookshop (Good Omens), Caring Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley is a Mess (Good Omens), Depression, Gen, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Ineffable Idiots (Good Omens), M/M, mild Self-harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-16 07:39:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29572614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aspiring_Eccentric/pseuds/Aspiring_Eccentric
Summary: The problem with having one job for as long as you have been alive, and having thought you would have it until you were wiped from existence, is you aren’t quite sure what to do with yourself if the Devine plan gets buggered.Crowley has questions.Aziraphale has answers.Let’s see if they match....
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 49





	1. The 76th Day of the Rest of Their Lives

**Author's Note:**

> This is my fist GO fic, and my first fic written in over a decade. This was meant to be a stand-alone in two acts but me being me, I couldn’t leave well enough alone and it went from 3000 to over 20k words. There may also be a sequel.  
> There will also be art I’ve scribbled up to accompany this story! Please Find them on Instagram under AspiringEccentric. I’ll add the art at the same time that I update the story.  
> The quality will hopefully improve as we more forward, as I have also been out of practice in drawing as long as I have been at writing.  
> If you have allergies to Fluff, the last chapter may have you in some hives (just a warning).  
> I have self-harm tagged, but I don’t go into any particularly graphic details, the worst of it is in chapter two.  
> So, without further ado...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They always misjudged his intentions, and that was fine by him. Something told Crowley that somewhere, in some infinitesimal corner of the cosmos, he could be appreciated for what he was actually doing: Not broadening the impact of evil, but lessening the burden so the weight of sin could be shared. Human resilience was astounding to him. Much like a child’s resilience is astounding to a jaded adult.
> 
> But the point was, they couldn’t claim he wasn’t doing his job, and in the meantime, a single act alone wouldn’t damn a soul to the infernal flames.
> 
> As it turned out, that infinitesimal corner had exceeding light blond curls, and was particularly good at doing the Gavoutte.

“You were doing so WELL! Why did you go and SPOIL it?” Aziraphale heard Crowley bark from the front hall. Startled that the demon was speaking to him, he peeked around the corner from the kitchen to see the dark figure clutching a flower pot with his hackles up and eyes glaring.

“What on Earth is the matter, Crowley?” He inquired timidly. They had been spending more time together now that the whole Heaven and Hell thing had gone sideways and neither of them had “jobs” anymore. But this was a new one for the principality.

The demon glanced over with his yellow eyes from down the hall. “None of your concern, Angel. This is between _me_ and the _plants_.”

Aziraphale opened his mouth again to protest the abuse, but Crowley took an intimidating step in his direction. Don’t be fooled. It wasn’t intimidating to Aziraphale, it was a sort of general aura of intimidation that demons posses like pheromones dispersing when they get riled. His slit pupils widened with insistence. “You wouldn’t understand. It’s unworthy,” he growled, his voice suddenly dropping and filling with a seething hate he hadn’t heard from him since a fight they’d had in the fourteenth century (AD). Aziraphale had barely understood the demon then.

His dark blond eyebrows slowly arched and he slipped back into the kitchen.

“You’ll just have to go,” he heard Crowley hiss as his snakeskin boots clicked away and the front door opened and quickly slammed shut. Unable to resist his curiosity -something he’d been guilty of too often lately- the angel quietly followed, drying his hands on his “Bless the Cook” apron as he went. Instead of opening the door, he stepped to the little window in the room adjoining the foyer and peeked through the curtain. Crowley’s lanky frame was leaning on the iron rail of the front stoop, the potted plant still between his thin hands. Suddenly, he hooked a long finger up through the hole in the bottom of the terra cotta pot and held it out at arms length like a bizarre version of Hamlet. “What did I say about spots?” Aziraphale heard through the glass. “Can’t stay with the others now, can you? _A bad example_.” The hairs on the back of his neck went on end with the way Crowley’s voice morphed when he said those last words. He watched as the demon pulled off the offending leaf and let it fall, then slowly tilted the pot on his finger. Soil drifted down through the air little by little. “Don’t worry. It’s not the fall that kills you.” The dirt suddenly avalanched and the plant went tumbling out after it, landing on the ground like the victim of a hurricane. He let the pot hang there for a second, the snarl on his face slowly receding.

Aziraphale sprinted back to his half completed canapés as quietly as possible, muttering to himself, “That can’t be healthy.”

As he left late that night, he scooped the offending plant up off the cold asphalt and took it with him, hoping it wasn’t too late. The first time he had been inside Crowley’s Mayfair flat -the day of the bookshop fire- he had marveled at the alcove of lush plants. They were the only living things in the place besides the demon and they were pristine. He’d been reminded of The Garden where they had first met. As he repotted the plant on the windowsill of the bookshop, he wondered how many tarnished plants Crowley had disposed of in a similar manner.

  
…

Aziraphale didn’t hear from the demon for a fortnight after the incident…

This never would have bothered him before the failed Armageddon, but now the answering machine in Crowley’s office was full and it wasn’t with disembodied demonic aberrations. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t spent centuries apart before. It wasn’t as if they’d made any kind of agreement after that fateful day they’d stood in a disused airfield and faced The End together about staying in constant contact. It just felt as if they had, at least to Aziraphale. 

So no, the answering machine wasn’t a prison to demonic forces, instead it hosted the somewhat halting voice of a worried angel. 

….

There had been one of those digital photo booths meant to be a modern call-back to Coney Island at young Warlock’s eleventh birthday party. Aziraphale had wanted to use the thing, but being something of a troglodyte, he couldn’t figure it out and had called Crowley over for assistance. 

In the sequence of seven pictures the machine had finally spat out, one could watch an abbreviated relationship of six millennia. 

In the first picture, both faces looked into the camera with some confusion and trepidation as to weather or not they were doing this right. 

In the second, Aziraphale’s dove -pre fatal accident- escaped his sleeve and reigned chaos over the scene. 

In the third, they were both independently attempting to wrangle the thing, frustration apparent in both expressions.

By the forth, the bird landed on the angel’s head and Aziraphale abruptly stopped moving as Crowley and he instinctively planned its capture with one shared glance.

In the fifth, Crowley’s hands were around the creature but there was a burst of white bird excrement streaking out in multiple directions and their faces reflected the proper horror at such an event.

In the sixth, the machine captured the only true photographic evidence of not only one, but two simultaneous miracles. The bird evacuant magically disappeared as they wished their counterpart’s person clean. There was a light glowing around the margins of Aziraphale’s head, and a red mist haloed Crowley’s eyes.

In realizing what they had just done, by the seventh photograph, they were both mid-laugh. The dove was still held in Crowley’s hands, gently clutched close to his chest. Over his shaking shoulder, Aziraphale’s cheerful expression was caught taking a fond glance at the side of the demon’s face.

It was this final moment of frozen time that caused Crowley to have the machine print a copy of the roll for himself after Aziraphale had taken the first and scrambled off to start his magic show. When he got back to his flat, Crowley had gone to his office and scanned the photos into his computer. He had then clipped the seventh from the bottom of the strip, and tucked it into the sun visor he’d added in the Bentley. It had been very impulsive, and looking back on it, a very dangerous move considering what could happen if the Wrong People saw it. It wasn’t as if this supervisors hadn’t been vaguely aware of the connection, there just wasn’t any tangible proof anything was going on.

The photo had been the only thing he had grabbed and tucked into his blazer before plowing the Bentley into the unholy flames of the M25 motorway.

Now he sat in the shining black car across from the angelic bookshop, and pulled the sun visor down. When he’d put the photo there, he had done it because it made him feel immeasurably happy; not something a demon should ever claim. But neither could one claim to have evidence that any sentient being could have the Knowledge of What he Was, and still look at him with such an expression as was on the angel’s face in that picture. 

For centuries all he had ever wanted was proof of Aziraphale’s fondness for, at the very least, his presence. Today, knowing it may be true imparted a fear and ambivalence in him worse than the threat of Holy Water.

You avert the end of the world together just one time, and suddenly your perspective goes and shifts.

Flipping the sun visor back up, Crowley climbed out of the car, and crossed the busy London street.

…

“Crowley!” Aziraphale exclaimed happily as the demon burst through the doors of the bookshop, sending the bell into a fit. “What have you been doing?” He fussed, standing from his old writing desk where he was examining an illuminated manuscript.

“Ahhh, you know,” Crowley shrugged, swaggering a winding path through the tables covered in old books as if nothing were amiss. “Just _demon_ stuff.”

Aziraphale studied him with a hint of crossness as he stopped beside the desk. 

“What?” he asked reproachfully, “Old habits and whatnot.” He picked up the angel’s winged mug and sipped from it, cringing a moment latter “‘S that cocoa?”

A satisfied smile crossed Aziraphale’s face at the disgust, but it fell as Crowley pulled out his flask and dropped several glugs of something fragrant into the drink and tried it again. Smiling, he offered it to the angel, who leveled him with a judgmental stare.

“It’s nine in the morning, dear boy.”

Crowley snorted. “Time? What do we care?”

He had a point, but Aziraphale liked to insist on the principle of things. “Well, anyway. What do I owe this unexpected…pleasure?”

The demon deflated slightly. “I-“ but he changed his mind. He restarted, “I’ve had a few thoughts. Just figured I’d get the holy’s advocate perspective, so to speak….”

It was an exceedingly nice day for early November, so Aziraphale locked the front door and insisted they sit out at the white painted iron table he’d recently installed on the small patch of grass behind the shop. The space was only about ten-by-ten and was edged on one side by the alleyway, but he’d put up a six foot wooden privacy fence in the hopes that ivy would eventually humor his desires. 

After sliding into his characteristic slouch that would have a human in need of a chiropractor after a few weeks but was perfectly acceptable to a spine that could extent into a serpent, Crowley kicked out his legs and tipped his head towards the angel. “We are three months PFA. I know we promised a moratorium on miracles for a while to keep things below the radar…but-“

Aziraphale eyeballed him suspiciously. “What did you do?” he demanded. “And what in the world is P.F.A.?” Crowley used abbreviations frequently just to annoy him. He’d admitted to creating LOL in “chat rooms” and been delighted when humans immediately picked it up and made dozens more for internet use within days, then insisted in using them in real life conversation. Contrary to popular rumors within the church, LOL did, in fact mean Laugh out Loud, and not Love of Lucifer, however.

“Nothing!” The demon insisted indignantly. “Post Failed Apocalypse. It’s just that, well, I thought it may be a good idea to see if we even _can_ , anymore.”

What a ludicrous idea, Aziraphale thought. However, like many things Crowley pointed out over the centuries, it had a chilling vein of logic to it. “I don’t think that’s how it works. What’s your reasoning on this?”

“I don’t know. I figure if they can’t smite us, then maybe they’d just make us totally impotent. Almost _human_.”

Putting the fresh cup of tea he’d brought with him back down on the table, Aziraphale shook his head. “No. Not the archangels, nor Satan himself have the power to change what we are, Crowley. They may have their courts and trials, but only She can do something like that, and I would have noticed a loss of energy that significant. Maybe the real powers don’t care.” He hadn’t heard of any angels being Changed or Falling since before the Flood. It seemed they were all where they were meant to be now. Would their stopping Armageddon have changed that? He frowned, thinking of his shift from Cherubim to Principality so long ago, causing his loss of access to that inner Sphere. Ultimately though, it was that demotion which had sent him to live among human populations. So, he had accepted the loss with the knowledge it had given him crepes, old leather bound books, and-“

An acorn bounced off his head. “Ouch!” he exclaimed, more from being startled than actual pain.

“Just making sure you were still here,” Crowley said, clearly suppressing laughter. “Bad aim. Meant to hit your chest. Sorry.”

He threw the demon a brief scowl, but that was all the admonishment he doled. “Anyway, what is it that has you worried? I haven’t heard from my people. Has Beelzabub interrupted any broadcasts?”

“Nah, just all feels so quiet, you know?”

“I thought you hated hearing from the Hoards. You should be elated!”

Crowley fidgeted. “Yes, but at least when I hear from them I’ve got a loose idea of what’s _happening_.”

“Maybe nothing is happening.” Aziraphale reached out and put a reassuring hand on Crowley’s sleeve. The demon looked down at it. “Look. You know how I get those feelings?”

“The ‘this feels spooky,’ but about love ‘feeling’?” Crowley hadn’t been completely honest when he’d said he didn’t know what Aziraphale meant that day. On rare occasions, he could feel it too… when the angle got too close to him. They basically had to be touching, even the sleeve of his blazer between them now was enough to buffer it, but it was as if the feeling emanated from the celestial being as an aura. A halo. But because of what Crowley _was_ , properly applied, it could discorporate him. Theoretically, anyway. That’s how humans stopped demon possessions. He wasn’t at all sure how it worked when sent directly at one of the Fallen in its own flesh.

Demon possession was caused by a different level of demon, a wandering spirit left over from the drowned Nephilim. Though the offspring were smited from the physical plain via that well placed flood, they could occasionally latch on to a human body. They didn’t have the capacity for miracles, empathy, or compassion. But a fallen angel was not the same creature, and besides Aziraphale and himself, no contact had been made between any angel and fallen angel since they were cast out. 

“Exactly.” Aziraphale was saying. “I sort of have this sense that we’re fine. For now, anyway. And that feeling? There’s more hints of it than before. It’s like it’s stronger. It’s as if some of them may not remember what happened, not Know what it was about, but a part of their very beings recognize what they very nearly lost…and they’re _grateful_ that they didn’t.”

“Very poetic.”

“Well, it wasn’t there before, and it’s honestly a comfort.”

“If you say so, Angel.” Crowley replied. “I guess if you’re still feeling those ‘good vibes’, then you’re still on the heavenly wavelengths despite what the archangels have to say about it.”

The angel across the table smiled. “Of course, why wouldn’t I be?”

Crowley changed the subject while slowly retracting his arm from under Aziraphale’s hand and out of his reach.

….

The following weekend …

“I say, this Johnson fellow seems a right prat, do you know if he’s your side’s doing? Well ex-side, I suppose,” Aziraphale amended as he read the newspaper from his wing back leather chair that Crowley had permitted him to install by the gas fireplace in his living room (which had recently been miracled into a real wood burning version). He still insisted on a physical subscription to the news, so long as it was printed on recycled paper. “This Brexit thing has to be, anyway,” he added.

Crowley grunted as he skimmed social media on his smart phone at lightning speed. “Yeah, that one was mine.” He looked up and grinned a toothy grin. “They _loved_ it down below. ‘Course the EU was, too.”  
  
Aziraphale looked confused.

Crowley shrugged. “Couldn’t have one without the other. Ole Boris is one hundred percent human error, though. ‘Course I claimed him, along with that twit across the pond.” He sank back in the black leather couch and put his feet up on the arm. Seconds later his attention was sucked again into the phone and he pulled several faces ranging from disgust to frivolity as he scrolled through a sequence of classic art memes. 

The fire was getting low.

They were quiet another few minutes. As Aziraphale finished the opinions section, a soft thud caught his attention and he folded the top of his paper down to see his companion’s head tilted back; eyes closed and mouth open. The shiny black phone with its snake scale case lay on the floor where it had fallen. The screen blinked off. A soft snore escaped Crowley. Smiling, the angel tucked a couch pillow behind his head and snugged the tartan blanket from the back of his own chair around him. 

Not being much for sleeping himself, he wandered the flat studying the strange relics that the demon had collected for reasons of his own over the millennia. Aziraphale knew any books, films and the majority of musical recordings in the flat were all digitized and computerized and he didn’t know how to browse any of it. There was a somewhat impressive collection of what seemed to objects del arte scattered about the concrete modern flat. It included a collection of paintings and woodcuts, mostly original. He’d grown used to seeing them in their sleek and comparatively anachronistic frames during his now frequent visits. He stared a moment too long at the statue of the battling angels in the hallway before moving on.

Crowley told him, decades ago, about sharing mushrooms with Hieronymus Bosch once at a summer solstice that had gone off in a particularly interesting direction. The demon had a passion for human art that would disturb his old coworkers. Agents of hell weren’t supposed to enjoy the creativity and artistic genius of mortals. They weren’t supposed to think about art at all. Throughout history, the only time Aziraphale had observed Crowley befriend a human was if they were destined to be great artists. The salons of Paris at the turn of the twentieth century were the only places powerful enough to draw him back across the Channel after he’d taken credit for Robespierre and then quickly arranged to have him put in one of those “head-cutting machines” the man had become so fond of.

Besides his chair, Aziraphale had only taken over the unused kitchen, seeing as the only time Crowley bothered to eat anything was when Aziraphale was around. Beyond that, he hadn’t felt it his place to impose himself on the flat. Though the wine collection, in its state-of-the-art walk-in wine cellar, had grown even more impressive between the two of them. They both blamed Greece for that one.

Finding himself regretting not bringing a book, but not quite willing to leave (insisting it was because it was growing cold outside) Aziraphale screwed up his courage to turn on the computing machine. Ghosting into Crowley’s office, he poked the power button on the inconceivably thin laptop that had been left upon the gold and red marble desk.

“Installing updates,” a throbbing white text informed him passively with a pinwheel of doom beneath it. He huffed. This was never an issue with analogue. He plopped into the throne-like chair with an impatient “tsk” and a glare that he reserved especially for new technologies and people who folded corners in books instead of using bookmarks. 

He’d never been in this room before, only glanced through the glass doors occasionally when Crowley tapped at the computer for reasons he didn’t comprehend. When the computer screen failed to change after thirty seconds, he glanced up at the single black shelf on the far side of the room beside the window and the sparse assemblage of objects on it. At the right edge, in the corner, was a glass bell jar about fourteen inches tall. A few record albums were leaning on it, threatening to push it over the lip.

Figuring he’d do a good turn, Aziraphale went to rescue the fragile article. Upon moving the bebop albums, he found himself staring at something he hadn’t been expecting at all. Returning to the desk with it, he sat down, holding the bell jar on his lap. He glanced at the door, listening for any sounds of life in the flat. In the distance was another quiet snore from the den. He bit his lip.

There was that damnable curiosity again.

Very carefully, as if moving a sleeping venomous creature, Aziraphale lifted the glass dome and set it on the desk beside the still updating computer. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the artifact before him. It floated as if enchanted, even when the dome was removed. The base of the bell jar over which the object floated had a fancy monogrammed “J” carved in it. He found that his hands shook slightly. 

An angelic feather.

But that was not a reason for him to feel such awe. After all, he had two wings worth of the things. No, this feather was pearly white at the top, but the root looked like it had been dipped in the most impossibly dark black ink. It invaded the hollow bone and started to infiltrate the lower barbs of the vane and shaft. This was the feather of an angel who had just begun to fall.

Aziraphale could feel it: This was one of Crowley’s original feathers.

Oh, he had done it this time. The guilt at the level of privacy he was invading settled on his shoulders like a wet wool overcoat and made his stomach roll. He bent forward quickly to grab the bell jar’s dome with the intention of putting it all back immediately. But, as he leaned, his open jacket bumped the feather ever so lightly. It was enough to disturb the delicate balance keeping the feather afloat, and when he sat back with the glass dome in hand, he watched as the feather drifted to the floor.

Oh dear. 

Oh goodness.

For a moment, he couldn’t move. But when nothing happened after a few seconds, he quickly put the components on the desk and moved to pick up the feather. No sooner than when his fingers closed gently on the shaft of the thing, did his vision blur and a great wrenching pain sear through his chest.

He looked down at his hands, but they weren’t his hands. They were narrow, with long fingers. They clutched more of the feathers, these ones also stained with black, but also with blood. The ground beneath his knees wasn’t the bare concrete floor of the office, it was white. Shining. Wings folded forward on either side of him. White wings, but scattered with more tainted feathers. The hands frantically plucked at the worst of them, wrenching them from the skin beneath. The pain felt like needles the size of ink pins being jabbed in and yanked out. Panic seized his heart.

“They were just a few questions,” he heard Crowley insisting, as he mutilated his limbs. It was Crowley, but it was also not Crowley. “Just questions.” He looked up.

A shining, silver city- The shining Silver City- Blindingly beautiful and eternal rose before him. A rainbowed prism above it flared out light in every direction. An overwhelming feeling of love and awe swept through him…

Then it was dragged out against his will. He tried to keep ahold of it, every ounce of his being desperately dedicated to its preservation. It was like trying to grab a stream of water. Like feeling your memories slipping and not being able to do a Damned thing to stop it. There was no doubt he would die without it.

But then it was gone.

And he did not die.

Instead, a creeping cold came sliding into its place, curling in his belly. He felt his chest swell and his head pounded with anger. And a voice that sounded exactly like Crowley in a full rage bellowed:

“YOU CAN’T DO THIS FOR SOME BLOODY QUESTIONS!” 

Aziraphale gasped as he came to himself on the cold floor of the office. His face was covered in tears. He had never experienced anything like that before. He took a few deep breaths, his body trembling. He unlocked his muscles slowly, feeling the warmth within him return to his limbs.

Somehow, the feather was back under the glass despite him being unable to recall getting it there. Maybe his body had moved on autopilot through the vision.

He had to catch his breath before standing up. Putting the bell jar back as fast as he could, he went into the hallway and immediately brought forth his wings, checking them for black marks.

Still pure white. To tell the truth, it had been something he’d worried about since the summer. 

What was that? A memory? Folding his wings back in, the angel returned to the wing backed chair before the warming embers of the fire. The demon was still asleep. How long had he been in the office? It felt like minutes and eons at the same time. Funny how time is.

“Bastards,” Crowley muttered in his sleep, but then he laughed -if a little manically- and rolled onto his side, one arm thrown up over his face. Demons didn’t need to sleep. Of course, angel’s didn’t have to eat, but Aziraphale did it anyway. Maybe it came from being around humans too long. Or maybe it was already in their natures to be more human, and that’s why they had been chosen to stay on Earth. 

Couldn’t have anything to do with annoying their superiors.

Aziraphale thought about what he’d just felt in the apparent vision. The connection that was severed, the snuffing of the holy flame from the being that was a fallen angel, and the aching hollowness that replaced it. Did the Fallen feel that all the time like angels could feel their link to the Light in the Silver City? All humans and animals had a Devine spark inside, even if most were blind to it. It was what gave them power to create, and it had been Crowley and Aziraphale’s jobs to guide that power in benefit of either heaven or hell in accordance with their superior’s commands. 

It was strange, not having anyone to report to. Somehow though, he didn’t feel a lack of responsibility, either. The question that had hung over them since that day they’d walked away from their old roles was still there: what to do now?  
  
On the couch, Crowley shuddered suddenly. His raven-like wings briefly strained to emerge, but the demon’s body settled and they faded again into his back.

Six thousand years ago the angel would have exited that room without turning his back to the human-like creature on the couch. Today, he refused to turn his back on him instead.

He thought about the plants in the hallway.


	2. Black Spots

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pouring a little more wine in his glass to give himself something to do, Aziraphale grew flustered. “Well, you see, I’ve done something and I’m not sure if you’ll …understand it or not.” He could feel yellow eyes slowly narrowing behind the sunglasses.
> 
> “I’m not sure I like the sound of this.”
> 
> Aziraphale toyed with the glass in his hands (which had its own gold script that read “Not today, Satan” parentheses “but call me this weekend”….It was a gift.). “You know how you throw out those plants? The ones that get the…the …spots?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to publish this tomorrow, but it’s midnight somewhere, amiright?  
> This is a stubby chapter, but was originally the end! ...then things got more complicated, I edited and added lines here and there and a continuation became necessary.
> 
> Art for this fic can now be found on my instagram! I will publish the art on the same day as the chapter it belongs to so it’s easier to find in the future as more images get added to the AspiringEccentric Instagram page.
> 
> Warnings:Angst, drinking, and evidence of self-harm

His fellow angels had never really understood him after what was commonly known as the Fall. He still kept Faith, he still carried out orders, but an apprehension began to creep into his manner. He no longer did things with the same surety of purpose. Weren’t they meant to be beings of love? Weren’t they supposed to help, understand and forgive? Did he have it wrong? 

The screams of pain from the souls of the Fallen as they were folded into new form and cast from the Light had been heard all across the Silver City on the day of banishment. He had been the only one to find tears in his eyes instead of a sneer on his lips along with the words “got what they had coming.” The pride and superior attitude of the others tried his patience and he withdrew from socializing like a Red Letter Christian in a crowd of overbearing modern American Evangelicals. They became unbearable. He may not have been on the losing side after the War, but he found himself alone and wandering never the less. He had nobody to talk to anymore. His deployment to the Garden, when it was ready, had honestly come as a relief. 

….

There had been a few more gaps in Crowley and Aziraphale’s time together over the months, but Crowley always managed to show up after his disappearances and never mentioned them. Achingly curious, but wishing to respect his friend’s privacy, Aziraphale didn’t ask. The business of accidentally touching the feather and the resulting _vision_ it had inspired was still at the forefront of his mind, and the guilt, as unintentional as the act had been, nagged at him.

They didn’t have proper birthdays because they weren’t born in the traditional sense. And there weren’t days yet when they had been created. But Crowley and Aziraphale had decided to choose days to use as birthdays centuries ago, to give them the excuse of meeting up should they want to use it. The angel had chosen the summer solstice in the Southern Hemisphere, and the demon the summer solstice in the Northern. So, on June twentieth, Aziraphale gifted Crowley a new set of bullet hole decals for the Bentley which he had procured after much confusion over the use of the eBay.

“I didn’t know you ever noticed those,” the demon said rather brightly upon opening the vintage first edition copy of _Casino Royal_ and having the decals fall out onto the table at the Ritz.

“Of course I did. And that they didn’t reappear with the restored version of that monster of a motorcar,” he replied with a smile. He’d always had more fun giving gifts than receiving them. “But there is something else…back at the bookshop.”

Crowley eyed him from behind his black lenses, a slow serpent grin spreading across his face.

Aziraphale pinked around the edges. “Don’t look at me like that, you beastly thing,” he said, but smiled none the less. 

“Didn’t say a word. Makin’ your own inferences, you are.” Crowley leaned in conspiratorially around the table. “But seriously, there is wine to be had!” Then he abruptly stood, a hand still on the back of Aziraphale’s chair. “And I know you still keep the best stuff at the shop.”

…

After a bottle or two, Crowley had forgotten the mention of another gift, but Aziraphale could think of nothing else, and it was making him a bundle of angelic nerves. He didn’t know how the demon would respond. He could be downright furious. They’d had their share of spats in the past, but that was when they had jobs to occupy themselves, and appearances to keep up…back before the angel had admitted that this was not simply a working relationship. He often wondered these days, when the demon had recognized their potential for true friendship.

_Probably as soon as I put a wing over his head during that first thunderstorm, bless h-_

“Why… are you staring at me?” Crowley asked with the slightest of slurring on his s’s. 

Aziraphale jumped. “What! Oh, what are you talking about?”

A somewhat critical smile curled up one side of his face as Crowley tipped forward from lounging in the overstuffed chair and leaned toward him. He used the hand unoccupied by a wine glass (which had the words “I’m not adulting today” scrolled across it in playful gold script) to wave a finger in a circle around the angel’s face. “You were making a face. Clearly thinking hard about sssomething. And staring at me while you did it. It’s disconcerting.”

“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale apologized.

Falling back into the chair, Crowley observed: “Oh my, that was fast. This is seriousss.” And sobered a hair. “What’s up, Angel? You hear from Upstairs or something?”

“No. Good lord, no.” He responded quickly. “Nothing like that.”

The demon relaxed. “Then what?”

Pouring a little more wine in his glass to give himself something to do, Aziraphale grew flustered. “Well, you see, I’ve done something and I’m not sure if you’ll …understand it or not.” He could feel yellow eyes slowly narrowing behind the sunglasses.

“I’m not sure I like the sound of this.”

Aziraphale toyed with the glass in his hands (which had its own gold script that read “Not today, Satan” parentheses “but call me this weekend”….It was a gift.). “You know how you throw out those plants? The ones that get the…the …spots?”

When Crowley didn’t respond, didn’t so much as move, Aziraphale stood up, put down his glass, and reached a hand out in the demon’s direction. A red, judgmental eyebrow finally arched slightly, and Crowley slowly deposited his glass on the side table without looking at it. He took the hand before him without a change of expression, and allowed his friend to assist him out of the cushion-nest he’d built for himself to drunkenly sink into. He was sober now.

Aziraphale led him up the spiraling stairs to the second floor, the natural light from the dome skylight at the center of the shop still illuminating the mezzanine in early evening light.

“You see, there was this room, up here. One I’ve never really used. Been locked since…well since I got the building really,” the angel was explaining, guiding his friend back to what had been a spare room not a year before. “The ceiling and far wall are made of glass. I believe it used to be an arboretum of some sort.” He was rambling. “It’s a queer old edifice-“

“ _You’re_ a queer old edifice,” Crowley muttered under his breath out of pure reaction to the state of his nerves.

Aziraphale threw him a scowl, but his heart wasn’t behind it.

“It just seemed to me to be a waste; it sitting there empty for so long. And those plants. They aren’t that bad, really, are they? Some of them are just not shiny enough it seems like.” Sensing that Crowley was not following him anymore, he put a hand on the doorknob and turned around.

The demon had stopped about five paces back. The air surrounding him was bristling despite his expression being a blank.

Resting demon face.

Then it was as if a time bomb was armed. Detonation imminent. His narrow shoulders began to rise, his thin lips pulled tight, teeth bared. Aziraphale could see the lines of his face deepening behind the glasses and between his eyebrows. A shadow formed behind his back in the gathering dusk and he realized Crowley’s wings had come out, though they remained folded behind him. Somehow it didn’t feel quite like it was directed at him.

“You can’t let the spotted plants with the others, Aziraphale,” he growled in a threatening, venomous whisper.

Aziraphale’s grip tightened on the doorknob, determined to stand his ground. “Wh-Why? Why, though?” He asked in a small voice. He cleared his throat and tried again. “They all seem to be fi-“

Crowley closed the gap in the blink of an eye and had the angel’s lapels in white-knuckled fists. “Because they aren’t GOOD ENOUGH!” The demon spat, his face so close that their noses nearly touched. There was something frantic curled in those tight features. “Because they are _poison_ , Angel. _Contamination_.”

Aziraphale could see through the dark glasses at this distance and his pupils were paper thin slits, not wide with intent to kill. His teeth looked sharp… but an angel recognized agony when he saw it.

“ONE. SPOT. WILL. SPREAD.” Crowley seethed with a choking voice. Bitterness boiled off of him like refracting heat waves.

Aziraphale’s expression went from reactionary fear to calm inquisitiveness. His friend wasn’t going to hurt him despite all appearances to the contrary. He slowly raised the hand that wasn’t gripping the doorknob. 

“It’s… never been about the plants, has it?” he asked in a quiet, understanding tone. Gently, he placed his raised hand on one of Crowley’s cold and coiled steel-strong wrists. 

He felt the vice that held his lapels ease up a fraction as the serpentine eyes faltered. Turning the doorknob, he took a step back, drawing the demon through the portal with him.

The evening sun filled the greenhouse with the warm, golden light of the summer solstice. The scent of lush greenery filled their lungs. The plants, rescued from the cold, unforgiving asphalt only over the last six months, were teaming with life. They thrived. Despite small spots or hints of yellow, they arched up to the ceiling and spread across the floor. Vines climbed walls and blooms unfurled in the slightly humid air. Crowley hadn’t even known some of them had the capability to flower. 

Aziraphale watched his face soften. The lines faded and the sharp, stony jaw loosened as the grimace left his lips and was replaced by a look of shock. His hands fell from their forgotten grip on the angel’s coat and his fingers snatched off his sunglasses as he took a stumbling step past him. His wings still hung trailing behind, and Aziraphale brought his fingertips to his mouth as a lump formed in his throat when he saw both scabby and raw bloody bare patches scattered throughout. There were entire gaps in the flight feathers, marring the elegant silhouettes. He stared at the broken plumage, remembering fists full of bloody quills.

“That’s-it’s _impossible_ ,” Crowley barely breathed the words, reptilian eyes wide. He was shaking, but not in anger anymore. “What …have you done?”

Aziraphale stepped up next to him, watching him study the plants. “That’s easy,” he replied with a shrug. “I loved them.”

The room immediately became blurry. The demon’s countenance crumpled and he hid it in his hands. This proclamation, given so matter-of-factly in the face of his despising himself, literally had him falling to his knees. The angel sank down with an honest, earthly plop beside him, and Crowley allowed him to put an arm around his shoulders, drawing him down to lean against his stout, solid safety. He resisted the call in him that screamed for him to turn and embrace the angel. Instead, he let his head bow into his own arms. He clamped his eyes tight and let the serpent in his mind curl around the pain housed deep inside until it was subdued. The chill receding, if just for a time.

He couldn’t recall much from before his fall. The memories of the spheres were taken entirely. His heavenly given name was whipped from him. Occasionally he may hear or see something and it would ring in his brain, pulling up hints of memory, but rarely was it anything solid. He was, however, allowed a vivid evocation of the sensation of losing the Light if he let his consciousness stray there.

And this was the opposite of that feeling. And the alarm that ate in his chest, eased as relief swept through him. It may very well wrap itself back around his black heart again, but momentarily, he had a reprieve. 

  
The sun began to set outside. The light went from gold to pink, to purple in the silence surrounding them.

When Crowley’s shoulders stopped shuddering, and they relaxed more fully against each other, Aziraphale asked in a hoarse voice, “How do you like your present?” 

“Thanks. I hate it,” the demon croaked, his face still tucked into his arms. But the angel could hear the smile in his voice even though he couldn’t see Crowley’s face. “You’re comfortable,” Crowley added almost absently.

“No, I think my leg is asleep-“

“‘S not a question.”

Aziraphale felt his heart skip. “Yes. Well, you can probably thank all the crepes for that,” he replied, though he knew that still wasn’t what the demon meant.

Crowley laughed. He sat up and whipped his eyes quickly while snatching his sunglasses off the floor beside him to hide his embarrassment. Aziraphale touched his closer wing and the demon flinched. 

“I’m sure I have a balm-“ he started. But Crowley was already rising and his wings were ruffling back into him, secreting away the self-inflicted pain.

“You are a balm,” he quipped. His voice had returned to normal, but he extended a hand down to the angel with a sheepish smile on his face. Aziraphale took hold and was hauled up; the lanky form surprisingly strong.

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” he replied, straightening his suit.

Crowley walked farther into the room, looking up at the plants in the dying sunlight as it was replaced by the humans’ faux stars of the city. “It really is like a slice of the Garden,” he observed. 

“No. It really is like the Earth,”Aziraphale corrected, taking a leaf in his hand and rubbing his thumb over a brown speckle. “Nothing is perfect here. That’s what makes it so interesting.”

An angel using his well of unconditional love on a demon, and a demon who uses his free will to love the human race.

Crowley glanced over at him. “We really are rubbish at being what we’re supposed to be.”

Aziraphale shrugged. “I’m fine with that, if you can be, too.” He looked out over the city of London, then side-eyed the human shaped entity beside him to find it smirking. A sly little smile came to his own lips.

“I will certainly try,” Crowley promised. “Sorry, for being such a shit,” he added in a lower voice afterward.

They watched in silence for a few minutes while the skyline lit up and the last hint of dusk pulled itself over the horizon. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Where will they go from here? Things get a little more complicated as we slip into a buzz and Aziraphale digs into memory, the Light, and the mutability of angelic souls.... and Crowley has a birthday that just keeps giving him gifts that he’s not 100% sure about.


	3. An Experiment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I won’t ask what you were doing when you were, well, when you weren’t answering you phone…or the door…for days. Weeks. Those times since October. It’s none of my business unless you want to tell me.”
> 
> Crowley avoided his eyes. Aziraphale’s chest twinged with the thought of crumpled black feathers. It was compounded by the vision he had inadvertently experienced.
> 
> Why was it so hard to find the words? What was he trying to communicate, really? All of this required context that he could not quite loop his fingers into. Release from Heaven’s command had left him intimidated by freedom and what it meant he was now free to pursue .
> 
> He tried to start again. 
> 
> “When I was demoted to principality, memories from the inner sphere faded.”

They resumed their respective novelty wine glasses, but moved from the circular table near the spiral stairs into the more comfortable sitting area by Aziraphale’s desk. Crowley deposited the wine on the coffee table and sank onto the couch.

“I’ve been putting a lot of thought into the whole ‘What do we do now?’ question for the last few months, as I am sure you have been as well…” Aziraphale said as he perched in his office chair.

Crowley slow blinked at him a couple of times. “Nope,” he replied, popping the P. “I’m on bloody holiday, far’s I’m concerned.”

Aziraphale was surprised. “But what about that whole ‘should we check if we can still do miracles’ conversation last November? I thought-“

Screwing up his face, the demon tilted his head and made a high pitched humming whine before saying, “That was purely for selfish reasons. Well, maybe not 100% selfish, but it was more about _us_ than everybody else.”

Aziraphale tried to remember the details of the exchange. “Oh,” he said dumbly. 

_“I guess if you’re still feeling those ‘good vibes’, then you’re still on the heavenly wavelengths despite what the archangels have to say about it.”_ Crowley had said, before veering off completely to another topic, distracting the angel with his birthday the following month and theater plans.

“ _Contamination_.” He recalled next.

“ _Oh_.” He realized the significance of that conversation was something absolutely different than what he’d thought It was at the time. 

Crowley was staring at him with peaked, pinched brows and a slight pout. Aziraphale took an improperly large gulp of wine. It was totally inappropriate for a demon to look cute, and he wondered if it was intentional or not. He didn’t really know how to respond now. Emotions he spent centuries pushing into a little box at the back of his mind leaked out messily and turned his face a pink shade for a moment before he could clear his throat, sit up straighter and say “You know, there was something else I’ve been working on-“

His companion sighed and threw the rest of the wine down his throat with a roll of his eyes. Letting his long legs splay out, he threw his arms over the back of the couch, wine glass hanging loose in one hand, a look of defeat on his face. 

Angelic fingers toyed with the stem of his glass and a frown tugged at one corner of his mouth. “You know, if you would just listen for a moment,” he said in a quiet voice, “You might find this has to do with us, too.”

The demon froze for a second, then sank into his seat and folded his arms. When it was clear Aziraphale had his attention -as skeptical as the gaze behind the sunglasses was- he continued.

“I won’t ask what you were doing when you were, well, when you weren’t answering you phone…or the door…for days. Weeks. Those times since October. It’s none of my business unless you want to tell me.”

Crowley avoided his eyes. Aziraphale’s chest twinged with the thought of crumpled black feathers. It was compounded by the vision he had inadvertently experienced.

Why was it so hard to find the words? What was he trying to communicate, really? All of this required context that he could not quite loop his fingers into. Release from Heaven’s command had left him intimidated by freedom and what it meant he was now free to pursue .

He tried to start again. 

“When I was demoted to principality, memories from the inner sphere faded.”

This got the demon’s attention. Aziraphale never talked about his loss of rank after “misplacing” the flaming sword. Of the cherubim sent to protect the The Garden and the humans inside, the Angel of the Eastern Gate was the only one punished for the humans’ actions. Crowley had always found it very unfair that Aziraphale was the one who got in trouble when his giving the sword to the first humans was simply the _logical_ move. He was supposed to protect them, wasn’t he? That was his _job_ and She punished him for doing exactly what was asked of him. _Fucking insane._ But the cherubim had taken it gracefully. Mostly because Crowley had voiced all his complaints for him so he didn’t have to. Now, he leaned forward in his seat, elbows on knees.

“…and I came across this sort of hypnosis thing humans do -clever creatures- to help bring forgotten memories to the surface. So I thought, at the most basic, physical levels, we are the same as humans in this form, correct?”

Crowley nodded.

“So, maybe these techniques could help me remember a little of the higher sphere!”

“Brilliant,” Crowley encouraged him, pointy chin resting in the heel of his hand on one propped up arm. It didn’t sound as enthusiastic as he’d meant it to, but he still didn’t see where this was going. The angel preened, pleased with the flatly offered praise anyway.

Aziraphale’s hands came up as if preparing to do a magic trick. “Whether we are falling from upper spheres to lower ones, or from Heaven to…well, Hell, we are still what we were before. We’re sort of recycled, but essentially, our souls are the same.”

“Recycled” was one word for it. He didn’t know if Aziraphale’s demotion had been the same essence-folding experience as being torn from grace and hurled unceremoniously through space while your being screamed in rage and sorrow so red that consciousness became such a burden that the Hellfire and presumed eventual death ahead felt like boon. Bit dramatic. He doubted it. Crowley shook his head. “Don’t have a soul, me,” he said matter-of-factly. He tapped his chest. “Big ole black hole in here.”

Aziraphale pressed his lips together. “Whatever are you talking about? Now, that’s simply not true. You’re a fallen angel, not _demon-spawn_. You still care about things. Your soul wasn’t _taken_.”

The demon huffed and stood up. “Then why does it h-” he thought better of it, “- why do I not sense that lovey-dovey residue you’re always on about?”

“Because that’s not part of your _function_ , my dear.”

“Why should I still have one if not for that, then!” he growled bitterly.

Aziraphale pursed his lips. He wasn’t sure he wanted to tell him, now. It would only upset him and possibly set off another explosive episode. He wondered if, when they’d taken his Name, they’d also taken some of his impulse control. Or maybe it had been a contributing factor in his fall to begin with. As soon as he had the thought, he felt ashamed for it.

“Do you remember anything of the Silver City?” the angel asked in the gentlest voice he could find.

Crowley squinted at him and snatched the bottle of wine from the table, leaving the glass there. “Not much,” he replied shortly after a long minute. Not much and everything. It was hard to put into words. Millenia of vocabulary danced in the chambers of his skull, but mastering the words to explain something so complex was not a skill he’d ever felt capable of. This was not a subject they’d discussed much in their long association. In fact, feelings about his fall were not something Crowley particularly liked to contemplate, much less scrutinize over a glass of wine, even with Aziraphale. It hurt too much. Still. He was sure, by this point, that it was meant to.

“But you do remember how the Light filled everything there. _Everyone_ , there.”

Crowley bristled and wouldn’t look at him as he sat back down.

Aziraphale swallowed, taking this brooding silence as confirmation. He felt his heart hurt in his chest. He didn’t want to say it, because it should be obvious: _You have a soul so you can remember what it was like to be there. So the lack of the Light can still hurt, even now._ The rest of the Fallen had accepted it; embraced it and wrapped themselves in the numbing cold of love forsaken. Save for Crowley, who over six thousand years later, still refused too do so. It tortured him, but that’s why he could still love – not that he would outright say it- the similarly conflicted throngs of humanity.

Lucifer had wanted the power provided by the answers. Crowley just wanted to know _why_. Aziraphale found it admirable.

When his friend didn’t continue his wittering, the demon finally lowered the bottle and chanced a glance over at him. The unexpected blatant adoration in the storm cloud blue eyes caught him off guard. They locked gazes for maybe three, no precisely three heart beats, before Crowley felt his accelerate and he had to break off.  
  
“What?” he snapped, finding his voice a pitch higher than he’d hoped and it sounded more like begging than demanding.

“Nothing, I just…” the angel fidgeted. “There was something else I found in my study of the subject. Can I show you?”

The demon eyed him with suspicion. “You already showed me one display-“ But the pleading in Aziraphale’s eyes transitioned the sentence over to “- okay fine, Angel.” Maybe the alcohol was to blame. He didn’t have to be so obstinate. He shouldn’t be, not with the angel.

Aziraphale stood up. 

“Jacket,” the angel demanded with the flick of his fingers. Grumbling, Crowley removed the lightweight black suit jacket and handed it over. He wore an open vest over a long sleeve v-neck t-shirt underneath. _What in the world was that about?_ He wondered. 

“Bottle,” Aziraphale demanded next. His expression mimicked one of a put-out librarian when Crowley made a defiant sound in his throat and he put out a hand. Much to the demon’s shock, the angel emptied the bottle in three large gulps before setting it aside and smiled like it hadn’t happened. Crowley nearly laughed out loud, but wanted to see where this was all going and feared he may disrupt it.

“Hands,” came the next short demand, Aziraphale offering his.

“I don’t knoooo- ….” But there was that face again; the one with the big eyes. “Ookay.” He still hesitated in his reach, his fingers quirking at odd angles, but they were taken eventually in the angel’s. He opened his mouth. Aziraphale cut him off.

“Just hush. Give it a second.” The angel closed his eyes. 

Crowley sat very still, his heart pounding in his ears. The distinctive “warmth” sensation he always sensed from contact with the angel was there, but he couldn’t ever remember it being so _intently_ there, before. It almost made him jittery. They had barely ever touched before that day the world didn’t end. From the first rain storm until sitting on a bench in St. James Park and trading corporeal vessels, he was sure he could count the instances. In the comparatively short time since their twin trials though, Crowley found himself graced with the ghosting of fingers over his sleeve or quick but strong grasp of hands. The strange but somehow perfectly right half-embrace upstairs an hour ago was more than he could remember passing between them in at least five hundred years.

More often than he would like to admit, he wondered if he gave off any weird sensations back. 

He heard Aziraphale take a slow, deep breath, and he found himself mirroring it. The warmth became more of a deep heat, and it crept slowly up his arms. He stared nervously, ready to jerk away. Not everyone knew it, but demons are chill to the touch. Hellfire burns because it is so cold, not hot. The results are the same, but not for demons.

“What’s going on?” Crowley asked in a low voice. He didn’t like to admit that the sensation was nice.

“Do you… feel anything?” The angel asked, cracking his eyelids open. 

Crowley gazed up at him and simply gave a nod.

“Does it..hurt? Or?”

He shook his head slightly, unable to find his tongue. Fearing Aziraphale may let go, he tightened his narrow fingers in the thicker ones. The angel sat down beside him, making no move to release his hands. The heat had now nearly reached his shoulders. Aziraphale closed his eyes again, his brow furrowing a hair as he redoubled his concentration. Crowley realized his own breaths had become shallow. He closed his eyes, turning his attention just to that feeling.

It was like his arms were sliding into a hot tub that was, for the fist instant, too hot. Then, the warmth passed through this shoulders, bursting into his body and his frame jerked. Aziraphale instinctively let go, mistaking the reaction as pain. The demon, half dazed, grabbed at his hands in rebellion at their absence.

“Wait…” he muttered. “Don’t stop. I just need you to.…”

To Aziraphale’s surprise, Crowley pushed him gently, positioning him into the corner of the couch. He blinked as the demon insisted with a gesture that he bring his legs up and lounge there. Then that surprise was overwhelmed by the larger surprise when he turned, inserted himself between Aziraphale’s knees, and reclined his slender form back against him with a sigh. When the shock wore off, the angel chuckled, and Crowley bore his teeth in a grin that he recognized was definitely exaggerated to cover his anxiety.

“Had to get more comfortable,” he explained, and removed his glasses as he settled. “For the feature presentation.”

Aziraphale’s heart swelled again. He let Crowley take his hands. The right one he placed on his shoulder but kept clasped in his own, the left he placed very carefully and not without some hesitation, on his breastbone, fingers sliding just under the fabric at the v collar of his shirt. 

That box at the back of Aziraphale’s mind that he liked to keep a lock on? It was leaking out everywhere.

“Well? Tally-ho, allons-y, whatever! Before we come to our senses or some hellish or heavenly source bursts in to stop …whatever it is this is,” Crowley insisted nervously. For all he knew it would keep getting hotter until he combusted and discorporated, but the hand clutching Aziraphale’s at his shoulder betrayed a refusal to back out now even if the world began to end, again.

“Oh, err, yes. If you’re sure. If it starts to ‘go wrong’-“

“Alright.” He answered, glancing back with what he hoped was a reassuring expression but wasn’t entirely sure. “The safe word is ‘Alpha Centauri,’” he joked. 

Aziraphale felt mildly soothed, then flustered at realizing the implication. 

Satisfied by this reaction, Crowley turned dutifully ahead with a smirk on his face.

Aziraphale stared down at the crown of his head for a long moment before closing his eyes and reinitiating the meditation. He shifted his left hand farther down under the shirt, stopping directly over his friend’s heart. He tried to ignore the smoothness of the skin there and the ridges of muscle and bone as they connecting to the sternum. Suppressing the curl of heat in his belly, he returned his mind to duty.

Knowing better now what to expect, Crowley relaxed into the heat as it expanded from Aziraphale and soaked into him. He let his eyes close. As soon as it passed through his skin and muscle, he felt it hit his heart with a jarring sensation.

Suddenly his body was humming. A prickling started in his hands and feet. He gasped after realizing he had temporarily stopped breathing. He felt dizzy. Up and down lost all meaning. The feeling in his heart threatened to tear it apart, and he fought it. Memories both new and ancient swam together in the foreground of his mind, real enough to taste. Whatever emotions they elicited were strong enough that unnoticed tears escaped his serpent eyes and streaked his distorted face. It took a moment of this struggle to realize that they were happy memories. Flickers of joy in an otherwise bleak existence. The fierceness in them was so powerful that they momentarily felt like something that must be battled against because otherwise they would crush and drowned him. Then, an accepting white wing came up through the tangle of thoughts and visions and hovered above his mind and it all ….balanced out. The memories united in a sort of harmony.

Once he recovered slightly, the heat, or whatever it truly was, began to grow slowly along a line through the core of him in both directions. 

….

Something was causing a stir in the white and gleaming home office of heaven….

A minor angle brought Gabriel’s attention to an anomaly on the floating globe. 

“What is it? I haven’t got time for any bullshit. Can’t somebody else gooo…oh. What in the Seventh Seal _is_ that?” he demanded, shocked by what he was seeing. He did a lap around the levitating sphere at his speed walk. He always took a moment to orient his brain to the map, not considering it important enough to memorize. “That’s fucking London, isn’t it?” he growled.

“Yessir,” answered the subordinate in a squeak.

Indigo eyes flared at the pinprick of golden, glowing light emanating upwards from one of the humans’ still thriving ancient cities.

“What is that bloody holy terror doing?”

“Nobody knows, sir. But it keeps getting brighter,” supplied the intimidated figure he’d nearly forgotten was there.

Gabriel’s nostrils flared. “Get this analyzed, ASAP! I want the papers in my hand before the end of the day. Does She still have a moratorium on transporting?”

“Yes, the No Interference Mandate is still in place.”

The taller angelic figure bristled. “Make sure I have a line to The Metatron as soon as I get that report.”

“Yessir.”

….

When the heat reached Crowley’s throat, the choking that was left over from the burst of emotion in his heart soothed. 

In nearly the same instant, the other branch of heat spread into his naval. For a moment, nausea swept through him. A truth he’d been too wrapped up in guilt to see slammed into his forebrain. He hadn’t manipulated Aziraphale to help him stop the Devine plan. Aziraphale had done it because it was honestly something he wanted to do.

His teeth chattered. A counter chill to the warmth caused his shoulders to shiver and a groan found its way into the open air. Instead of the wine from earlier bubbling up, however, words came spilling forth.

Aziraphale could barely make sense of the string of obscenity-strewn communications being hurled into the room by the demon on his chest because he was too concentrated on building the Light and passing it through. He didn’t know if he was creating it, or channeling it, but so long as he didn’t hear the agreed upon syllables to halt the flow, he was determined not to stop.

“-Damned blighter. …. Only thing I’m good at is not being good at what I’m supposed to be good at. …. Poisonous rubbish that breaks shit. …. Not worth the space I fill. …. But I bloody well better find something to show. …. Need to stop being such a fucking tosser to the angel. He’s the only friend I’ve got. He deserves better -.”

The Light blinked at the last sentence, but recovered from the stumble swiftly.

Crowley’s mouth stopped running as the heat extended past his throat and up his spine. _Well, that was fucking embarrassing_. Sweat beaded on his forehead and a pressure bloomed between his eyes. Simultaneously, a jolt rocked him in the lower abdomen in a very animalistic sense. His eyes shot open, pupils expanding until they were practically round, the whites invaded by the yellow snake iris. Everything was glowing gold. Aziraphale’s face flashed before his imagination. He said, in a perfect imitation of real life “At heart, you’re just a little bit of a good person.” Then, the ability to perceive distinct shapes was lost in the aura. He didn’t know if the vision was happening in the material world or just in his head, all he knew was that is was the truth. 

_We’re on our side_.

“HOLY …. _FUCK_!” Crowley gasped loudly as every muscle in his body began to contract against each other and the very air seemed to have a texture against his skin. A heat unlike -but not unrelated to- the one Aziraphale was sending through him bloomed in his guts and farther down. His body couldn’t decide if it was in pain, or wracking, intense pleasure. He burned and didn’t want to give it up. The chased the sensation. Sipping in tiny gulps of air despite it being inconceivable that there could be any room left in his lungs, his bony shoulders dug into the angel as his back involuntarily arched. In one moment he wanted to laugh uncontrollably, the next he wanted to wail instead. His heart slammed in his rib cage and he couldn’t properly feel his legs. Head pressed back on Aziraphale’s chest, his neck muscles bunched into tight restraining ropes and his jaw hinged open. The moment drew out like an explosion underwater, frozen in time before the shockwave can burst forth. Finally, he could no longer hold on to the mind-numbing pleasure, nor the oxygen pinned in his lungs. 

The world quaked. 

His muscles released.

He came apart in a supernova.

The sound that burst forth could not form words.

Aziraphale found himself clutching on to a thrashing demon. The moan grew to a scream very quickly. He dug his fingers in, attempting to keep the flailing figure from slipping away from him. Somehow, he maintained concentration through the writhing of Crowley’s body against his. He didn’t know what he had expected, but it certainly wasn’t this. Well, not exactly. He knew what was happening was not pain, because Crowley’s reaction to pain was anger, and he definitely didn’t sense any anger in this moment. He did, however, notice a hint of pride in himself at what was occurring. It was very human of him, but he didn’t care.

He needed to refocus. When the demon’s head stopped spasmodically tossing against him, Aziraphale took the hand that was on Crowley’s shoulder and hovered it over his forehead above shockingly round eyes that were just starting to relax in exhaustion. _Two more to go_. His brow furrowed.

Crowley wished the heat would take a moment off. He needed a break. His body was both heavy and floaty and everything was fuzzy. He wanted to sink bodily into Aziraphale’s chest and hide in this feeling.

But the angel plowed on, and the heat continued on its weirdly divergent but united paths. A strange noise escaped him again as the top of his head felt a sensation like a trickle of hot water started to run over his scalp, sending a tingling down his spine. Then the heat spilled into his tailbone and poured warmth through his femoral arteries all the way down to the soles of his feet. As it terminated, it was as if an electro-magnet switched on and was drawing him to the Earth. All the thoughts and feelings running through him coalesced and found solidity. He couldn’t say he liked all of them, but he was used to that. The important part of the moment was that he felt rooted. He wasn’t sure he had ever experienced such peace.

Then, Aziraphale’s hand landed on his forehead. 

Panic spiked as the palm settled against his head and the peaceful fuzzyness holding him in its comforting womb evaporated instantaneously. Adrenaline and survival instinct spiked and his hands tore the palm from his scalp and screeched “ALPHA CENTAURI!” in such an abrupt show of force that Aziraphale was instantly thrown from his trance. The angel released Crowley’s body and the demon bolted upright with a gasp like a classic film vampire. A powerful shudder ran through him. The heat faded to more of a residual warmth. He immediately pined for it, and it made his body hurt. The surface of him felt overly sensitive, like a bruise was wrapping around him in purples and black.

Aziraphale nearly put a hand between Crowley’s panting shoulder blades, but when he got close, the demon winced. Guessing he still had too much power coursing through him, he sat disappointed, shaking his hands like they were covered in a sticky substance while watching his friend. After a minute, he noticed that he felt sort of strange.

Crowley scrubbed his hands over his face, his heart still racing from the shear terror the back of his mind had perceived at the idea of the power Aziraphale was producing reaching the top on his head. His instinct told him that things could have gone very wrong had it happened. Running his fingers through his now messy auburn hair a few times, he blinked hard at the ceiling. Eventually, he slid to the opposite end of the couch and turned around. He didn’t look up. He couldn’t seem to catch his breath. The loss of the warmth and the fleeting alien sensation of calm it instilled in that moment before he’d pulled away was palpable. The raw emotion of the experience felt too real, and he stuffed it down into himself.

“Are you alright?” he heard Aziraphale ask, tentatively.

“Yes,” he muttered, shaking himself like a wet dog and then buzzing his lips. “Bbb, I mean, I think ssso.” He finally glanced at his friend. “Just what in the Hell was that?”

Aziraphale’s face was glowing, but his eyes were tired. He found it slightly difficult to form words. “Remember we were talking about the Light? You know how angel’s carry the Eternal Flame?”

Crowley side-eyed him with ambivalence. He found he was unsure if he wanted an explanation now.

“I found, that if I meditate-“

“Since when do you meditate?” He derailed the conversation.

“Oh, since about 1965,” Aziraphale replied distantly.

“You’ve never mentioned it.”

The angel shrugged. “Never been relevant, dear.” His eyes drifted closed.

“Angel?” Crowley sat up straight. “Angel.” He shot across the lounge and straddled him, taking hold of his shoulders. “Angel!” He barked in higher pitch now, giving the shoulders a jostle.

Aziraphale’s eyes groggily reopened and he pulled his head back to focus up at the demon crouched in his lap. He felt drunk. Was this what “being tired” was like? He grinned and reached up, pinching Crowley’s pointy chin between thumb and forefinger. “So emotional.”

Aziraphale was _slaphappy_. 

Crowley took offense, but concern and relief out ranked it. Aziraphale was touching his face. Aziraphale never touched his face. “Am not. ‘S a normal reaction to seeing someone die in front of you.” 

The angel giggled. “Drama Queen of the Damned.”

Crowley just raised an eyebrow and settled back on his heels as the hand fell away. “Are _you_ alright?”

“I do believe I need to have a kip, as the humans say. Just a couple hours, get my strength up.”

“Has this happened before? I mean when you’ve meditated?”

Aziraphale’s expression pinched. “No…. this isn’t the same. I never finished my explaining!” He realized, becoming slightly more animated. “In order to do what I did here, I had to combine the meditation with the humans’ memory hypnosis. It’s experimental. I think I’ll be better at explaining later. It’s,” he waved a hand vaguely. “Complicated. Check my desk.” His eyelids were giving in to the weight of unconsciousness again. 

“I’m going to stay. ‘Til you wake up.” Crowley said quickly “….nothing better to do, anyway,” he made sure to add.

Aziraphale simply nodded to his friend’s reassuring voice, and leaned into the falling sensation. He felt his forehead land on Crowley’s shoulder as he tipped forwards and put his arms around the demon’s waist in a weak but grateful sleep-drunk hug. A second later, he was flying.

Crowley froze as Aziraphale’s arms went about him and he found himself in a rather awkward position. After his brain stopped misfiring, he gave in and embraced the passed out ethereal being. Putting a lot of effort into being innocent about it, he appreciated the warmth flowering in his chest for a minute. Then, he carefully leaned Aziraphale back and disentangled himself. He rearranged limbs on the cushions and fetched a pillow and blanket from a nearby chair. He would have carried the angel to bed, but his legs were still wobbly, and he was fairly certain he didn’t own one. Satisfied, Crowley folded his arms and stared down at his work for a moment. The fact that so many humans had somehow mysteriously replaced the image of what Cherubim looked like with the funny little Putti invented to fill space in paintings drifted into the back of his mind and made a lopsided grin curl up his face. “Cherubic,” would be a perfect human term to describe the face on the pillow below him in two different meanings, since Aziraphale’s earthly corporation didn’t look any different after his demotion to principality. The urge to sit back down and replace the pillow under the angel’s head with himself stirred in him, but he still couldn’t get black spots out of his mind, so he strangled the desire.

It was strange seeing Aziraphale asleep. He squinted like a first time mother making sure their spawn’s chest was still rising and falling. Convinced, he finally stepped away to slump into the nearby chair he’d retrieved the bedding from. Pulling his folded jacket from the back of the chair where Aziraphale had placed it, he slipped his arms into the sleeves. Maybe it would help retain some of that warmth.

Meanwhile, in the Silver City….

The glowing Metatron entered the Echo Chamber: a perfect sphere that was also a mirror. At what may be conceived as the top was a swirling inverted whirlpool of white and blue light that somehow did not reflect off of the surrounding polished surface. Whispers echoed ceaselessly through time and space. Most beings would go mad after their first second inside. The Metatron -nor the shuffling little creature that cleaned the place on Tuesday and looked vaguely like a bipedal platypus- where “most beings.” The Metatron was the highest ranking of all the angels. The creature was the janitor.  
  
The Metatron walked into the center and turned his face straight up at the light, which would have blinded anyone else. The whispers filled him, and he found his voice.

_Something is happening on Earth, Lord. Hours ago, there appeared to be a power surge of The Light in the English Isles. We are unsure of its source, but have our suspicions. It had a convergence with an infernal soul, and seems to have somehow masked it. We don’t know if it’s destroyed it, or if it simply hid it, but it is now untraceable from the observation globe._

No response was given, so he continued:  
 _Gabriel requests permission to send in a putti drone for observation_. 

Still nothing.

_Lord, this could be important. We need to know what happened; why these powers merged. What were they doing?_

The light vibrated, the blue and white bending and shattering and bouncing like beads of water on a subwoofer as they swirled clockwise above his face. The Voice shook him.

It _giggled_.

The Metatron blinked when it was over.

Then sighed.

“As helpful as always,” he muttered, and took off for the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The roll top desk containing Aziraphale’s blasphemous study materials from this chaper is in the room labeled “unknown room” in this absolutely wonderfully rendered resource by mochacoffee on tumblr. Check it out through this link:  
> https://www.google.com/amp/s/mochacoffee.tumblr.com/post/611550631327580160/i-created-a-3d-model-and-floor-plan-of/amp
> 
> Also, as usual, there is ART to be viewed for this chapter on my Instagram, AspiringEccentric if you want to take a peek:  
> https://www.instagram.com/p/CLuPZjSD1sP/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link  
> There will also be a pic added tomorrow (feb 27,21) of The Janitor since I have had several people love the concept of a being existing alongside The Metatron as the only thing in the universe that can be in such close proximity to God and not go mad...and it’s entire function is to do the tidying up. (It may be featured in the sequel to this fic as well).


	4. The Globe was on Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale stayed seated, outwardly still as he watched the chaos in front of him unfold. He was good at that; staying calm in the face of explosive energies. The papers didn’t matter. He could remember all of it without reference at this point. Nearly word-for-word. He’d been investigating these ideas since 1941. If hurling the written notes into a fire would make the fallen angel feel better, he wasn’t going to stop him.

Crowley sighed. Aziraphale had been asleep for an hour, and he’d just been sitting there, thinking. He wasn’t a big fan of extended periods of uninterrupted contemplation. It was one of the reasons he slept so much when there wasn’t trouble to be made or an angel to annoy. 

He should be happier now that the infernal powers-that-be weren’t constantly hassling him for reports. He should be galavanting around the globe, enjoying the freedom he had, no matter if it was fleeting or not. But instead, he found himself thinking all of the time. The fear and resulting guilt and anger that gripped him frequently in recent months seemed weird from outside the experience, but overwhelming and rational while drowning inside of it. The danger had been averted, but the worry was like an unshakeable habit ingrained in his very existence.

Feeling the angel was unlikely to wake any time soon, he materialized his wings and let his fingernails mindlessly begin zipping the barbs together on the more ruffled vanes the way a bird’s beak does. After eons of performing this task, it was second nature and he didn’t even have to look. At the moment, he’d rather not. It had been a very long time since he’d intentionally done that level of damage to the appendages. 

Not since he’d gotten used to being damned. He hadn’t been lying when he said it wasn’t bad once you got used to it, it was the getting used to it that was the difficult part. Like that first rush of freezing wind after being locked out in the cold. Your body rebels and shakes, but given enough time the arms of hypothermia start to embrace you and a lie of warmth comforts you into accepting perdition.

 _Acting pathetic_ , he thought, answering Aziraphale’s question from earlier about what he’d been doing in his flat when he wouldn’t return calls or answer the door. Time felt distended and a minute would feel like hours. Then, he’d blink and a day would just be gone. And there would be dark feathers and blood to be cleaned up.

Okay, so maybe he’d never gotten used to it.

He looked like a raven that had been attacked by a murder of crows, and it disgusted him. He made a strangled sound deep in this throat in response to the emotion. There was a beat of warmth in his chest for a moment, as if the heat the angel had imparted had left an low burning ember inside, and it was answering him. It wasn’t like when he’d first come out from under his hands, but it was there.

_Curious_. 

“Check his desk?” Crowley recalled aloud. Shuffling his half-preened wings away with mild discomfort, he stood up. There were at least two desks downstairs that he knew of, perhaps more upstairs. Aziraphale’s fondness for antiques knew few bounds. He supposed he had time to check them. Taking one last glance at the napping principality, he turned to investigate the desk beside him.

This desk was the simple writing desk that was practically out in open view in the shop. Customers weren’t supposed to be back in the little sitting area Aziraphale and he had passes so many hours in over the past two centuries, but it wasn’t exactly secure. It was fairly organized by comparison to other surfaces there, but Crowley suspected this “research” to which his friend referred would be a tad too sensitive to just leave laying about willy-nilly in public human view. There was a difference between playing at being a theosophist or theologian for the benefit of human eyes, and just acting a blatant amateur. Conspiracy theorists abound and can cause enough hassles running around half cocked and chuck full of unrelated ridiculous ideas, no reason to give them fuel. That’s how you get the Inquisition. No, if Aziraphale was working on something of a … _higher interest_ , chances were good it was tucked up in the giant turn of the century, lockable roll top desk in the back room, whose door just looked like a broom closet.

  
Crowley waved his hand over the lock and it clicked. What? If those fireworks earlier (of which he was trying very hard not to focus on) hadn’t set off alarms above and below stairs, then clearly their previous bosses had much bigger problems than past employees inappropriately using their old business cards. 

Entering, he did the same to the desk’s lock and rolled the top up, the old wood slat tambour receding into the back of the desk behind the rows of pigeon hole storage cubbies. The compartments were packed with scrolls. The desk space was positively massive, so big in fact that had the demon wanted to, he could crawl onto the desk top and roll the whole thing closed down over him. And every inch was covered in papers, reference books, and fountain pens. Beside the desk was also one of those old revolving library tables that resembled a wooden Farris wheel that carried books instead of people, and it was also full.

What a mess. Aziraphale had an organic way of organizing that apparently only made sense to him. It’s _cozy_ , he’d insisted to Crowley the first time the demon had stepped inside the angel’s abode and had to move books in order to find a place to sit.

Sure.

He picked up a lithograph with Hindi writing on it and gave it a skim. Squinting, he took a seat in the wood swivel chair that could very well be one of the original Jefferson prototypes. The seat was threaded too high for his long legs, but he didn’t bother adjusting it. As he wheeled forward, his knee bumped the underside of the front desk drawer. A tingle went up his spine. Something was there that wasn’t supposed to be.

“My serpent sense is tingling,” he said to the empty room. Bending down, he studied at the innocent looking front drawer. He slid it out. Nothing very interesting. Placing a hand on the bottom, he felt it again.

“What have you done, you clever bastard?” He kept one hand on the underside of the drawer and one on the bottom of the inside, and focused. There was no physical secret compartment added to the drawer, but there was a magical one. 

“ _Naughty_ Angel!” Crowley said, a broad smile rising on his face along with his eyebrows. “What would Gabriel do if he’d known?” Practicing human occultism was not outlawed in any angelic text that he was aware of, but that was because it simply _wasn’t done_. This was not a dilettante’s magic, either. Aziraphale had _folded space_. He wasn’t even sure how long it would take a human wizard or witch to figure that trick out. “A regular John Dee, you are…”

Meditation, hypnosis, magic? He was getting all sorts of tidbits for his birthday. What was going to behind this door? An angelic spank bank? Giving the fabric of reality a tug, Crowley twisted his hands counter to each other just as he had the thought that if he were to get something he didn’t want to see, he had no idea how to put it back.

He jumped to his feet when papers went sailing through the air as whatever had been folded into the fourth dimension came popping into the third underneath them. A few waterfalled onto his boots. He bent down to hastily retrieve them along with the ones coming to a rest after fluttering down around him. When he straightened, papers in hand, he hesitated. The object was still halfway covered in parchment, but he made out familiar soft black felt between the white sheaves. Dropping the papers on the only empty spot left on the desk, he slowly reached out to brush the remaining parchment away.

It was…

An unbelieving breath escaped him and became a quiet, short laugh. His fingers slid onto the black felt like joining hands with an old friend.

“I thought I’d lost you in the Blitz,” he said softly as he lifted the hat from the desk clutter. He fingered the crown, working the fabric fondly. A.J. Crowley was stitched in red inside the inner leather hat liner. In the band was stuck a singular black feather. 

“You stole my hat, you _absolute prick_.”

He could be mad. He could hold it against Aziraphale as yet another thing kept back from him over their long arrangement. But… he was fairly certain he’d never put one of his own feathers in the band.

Damned eyes, misting up for no good reason. Damned heart, swelling uncomfortably at memories he’d thought only he recalled with affection.

Slowly, he set the hat on his head and snugged it down, a stupid grin on his face. He remembered the expression of absolute gratitude Aziraphale flashed as he’d accepted that satchel of books after they’d “punched nazis” together. For a long minute, he stood in the reminiscence, that little ember in his chest being fanned by the thoughts.

Then, he took a deep breath, straightened his shoulders, and resumed the task at hand: deciphering just what the hell the angel had wanted him to know regarding the pile of “research” on this desk.

He retrieved the lithograph he’d looked at earlier. “Chakras…,” he muttered. “Cripes, Angel. Meditation? Chakras?” His eyes skimmed the desktop. “Chi? When did you become suuuch a hippy?”

  
….

In Aziraphale’s dream, he landed in a London street market in Southwark. It looked to be about 1610 by the clothes, speech, and state of the cobblestone byways. He came in through the dense haze ever so present for the period that it made it fairly safe to get around by wing. He stopped at a baker’s stall to pick up some tarts and wandered aimlessly in contentment while snacking. Though he had an excellent memory, he was sure the dream was peppering in inaccuracies, which was fine with him. Animals more likely found in the Middle East wandering out from alleyways would keep things interesting. If this was what dreaming was like, then he was starting to see the appeal. It was no wonder Crowley liked it. The demon had an exceptional imagination, no doubt he had the capacity to create whole worlds in his mind.

Speak of the devil. 

“- then he threw the artichokes at the servant’s head because they weren’t half oil and half buttered and went on a rant for five minutes in the middle of the establishment, wanting to see the manager. It’s no wonder he got in so many sword fights, bloody prig. You no doubt love his paintings, though.” 

Aziraphale realized the demon must have been walking beside him for at least half the street already, but he’d been too distracted by all the architecture and fashion he hadn’t seen in four hundred years. “Twat wanted to be a knight, instead he got axed by one. Never could resist a temptation.” Crowley finished and turned to look at the angel, who was starring at him with a big grin on his face. “What?”

Aziraphale couldn’t help it. It had been a long time since he’d seen Crowley with such long hair and that ridiculous goatee. “Nothing,” he simply replied.

Suddenly, they occupied a table at a pub. The period was the same. Dream Aziraphale’s mind was focused on the fact that he had been helping advise on the translation of the King James Version of the Bible at the time. There were several things bothering him about what Heaven wanted him to make sure were included in it, he recalled. 

Pipe smoke clouded the inside of the pub as much as the smog did the streets outside the big window behind Crowley. Several candles sat lighting up their corner table with a warm glow. Some of the people at other tables didn’t entirely fit into the scene. He could have swore he saw Newt Pulsifer bumbling behind the bar, spilling drinks while wearing some sort of inaccurate Madrigal costume. And somebody, somewhere, was playing Queen’s Somebody to Love on Irish penny whistle.

“Got a commendation for that lot with the powder kegs, despite it going pear shaped for ‘em. Thanks for sending those letters,” Crowley said, tipping his cup at the angel. “Coulda been a real disaster.” When Aziraphale didn’t respond he put the ale down. “Oi, ‘s wrong with you?”

The principality perked up. “Sorry, just thinking about James-er, his Majesty, that is. He’s a good king as far as ‘good’ can be used when describing royalty, he just seems rather …conflicted.”

A grin curled up Crowley’s face. “That’s what the kids are calling it these days?”

Aziraphale just blinked in confusion and the demon laughed. “Never mind, Angel. I’ve got my orders, you’ve got yours and sometimes it’s best not to trade them. Though it appears he’s making my job a lot easier than yours. He really seems like he’s living his best life and all I can do is stand to the side and say: Slay, esteemed sovereign.” He lifted his drink in a salute to the room and raised his voice. “Get it, your Majesty.” 

A few confused cheers echoed him. Any excuse for a drink.  
  
Unable to fathom Crowley’s speech, Aziraphale put on his best unassuming shy smile. “Yes, dear, whatever you say. I’m glad to see you’re at least enjoying yourself.”

The demon’s expression softened from his outrageous pantomime to one of those rare heart-melting, honest smiles that always made Aziraphale wish he didn’t have to hide his eyes all of the time.

“Listen, speaking of kings, The King’s Men are putting on Henry VIII next month.” Crowley snaked a hand across the table and hovered it halfway over Aziraphale’s, as if unable to decide if he should make the contact. “It’s been a while since we’ve been to the Globe…”

For a moment, Aziraphale remembered he was dreaming, and a corner of his mind that stood away from the dream world realized that this was somewhat similar to a conversation that had actually happened. He’d had to do plenty of rationalizing about their trading assignments, but so far, it hadn’t appeared to cause any major problems. The jobs got done. The home offices didn’t, apparently, notice the difference. Witch trials. The questioning of the idea of the Devine right to rule. Alchemy becoming science. Warring factions of the church. Crowley had been right. 

Crowley had been right about quite a lot of things, Aziraphale remembered thinking as the two sat across from each other in that pub. He glanced down at the hand hovering above his. “You know, I do love t-“

A huge amphibious eye filled the large window to the street over Crowley’s shoulder, causing the angel to leap to his feet. It’s massive pupil grew wide, and it’s brow drew down in a very human manner. But it was not focused on him, Aziraphale noted, it’s gaze was burning into the demon’s back.

It blinked-

-Aziraphale was sprinting down Park Street in the direction of the theater. His heart raced in his corporation and he wondered if he could have a heart attack. Held back by a meeting at court he couldn’t get out of, he was late to meet up with Crowley for the play. Only when he’d finally made it out to the open air had he seen it: a pall of smoke. A column of black and brown rising from the direction of Southwark, across the river. Panic seized him. This wasn’t a dream, this was a pure memory. Perhaps the memory hypnosis hadn’t worn off. If he had the time, he may have had the wits to figure that it may have been the memory hypnosis that had triggered the vision in Crowley’s office that past winter. But that was a thought to contemplate when the world wasn’t burning.

The regular smog of a London afternoon was ten times thicker overhead, and the yellowish haze on the street was noxious beyond burning woodsmoke. It was positively brimstone and it seared his throat, but he kept going. Ash fell like ominous snow. Was this what Hell was like? The fire had already gained the upper seats and flags of flame waved as terrible banners, cheering on the horror rising in the people of London below. 

The Globe was aflame.

Why did London have to be such a historically _flammable_ city?

Human bodies were being put out under smothering blankets. Children wailed for their mothers and choked on the smoke as if a reply. People moaned and cursed and keened in pain and sorrow. Buckets of water were being passed down lines from the nearest wells, but the efforts didn’t have any effect. Trying to be subtle, he touched people as he shuffled through the press, doling out small miracles to try to dull pain and heal what he could without being obvious. Burns became less serious under his hands. Fractures became bone bruises. 

He didn’t know his earthly body could move so fast through a crowd. He didn’t think. He needed to get to the front, to the doors of the flaming theater. He knew regular earthly flame may discorporate him if given enough time, but it wasn’t as if he planned to stay in there long.

“Crowley!” He yelled as he approached the doors. The rumble of the humans and the roar of the consuming fire was too loud here. “CROWLEY FOR GOD’S SAKE, ARE YOU IN THERE!” He screamed, letting a shred of his celestial voice leak in in order to peal through the noise like church bells.

When there was no reply, he screwed up his courage. He began to run toward the heat that he shouldn’t have been able to bear being so close to, only too late in noticing with an astounded shock that it was not heat at all, but flesh-melting cold.

Crowley came busting out of the Hellfire like a gangly black cannonball, tackling Aziraphale and carrying him several yards before collapsing to the dirt on top of him. His hands wound into the angel’s neck ruff, his glasses lost in the tumble. “JUST WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU THINKING?” He shrieked in his anxiety riddled panic, his eyes wide and entirely filled with serpentine yellow. His singed hair and clothes sent up curls of black smoke, his tightly drawn face an artwork in charcoal smudges.

“I-I didn’t realize!” Aziraphale had tried to explain while being hit with the fact that he’d nearly thrown himself blindly into excruciating, soul-crippling pain and then non-existence. For a demon.

Said demon continued to shake on top of him for a moment longer, then regained some composure and climbed off. Finding his glasses before they could be trod underfoot, he replaced them on his face as his flags of red hair were pulled from his ash-streaked face by the sucking cold of the fire behind him. For a moment, it was as if no one else existed.

Aziraphale slowly stood. The humans! He took a step toward the flames. “Are there people inside?” he gasped.

Crowley stopped him with a raised hand leveled at the center of his chest. “Not anymore,” he answered in a flat voice. For a moment he wouldn’t look at the angel. “I got as many out as I could…but some….” The expression of torment that crossed the demon’s face stabbed Aziraphale in his guts. “I couldn’t let them keep suffering.”

He wanted to say something comforting, but couldn’t find the words. “What do you think happened?” he asked instead. It was the wrong question.

The demon finally met his eyes. This had always been a moment that confused Aziraphale, but he’d never had the heart to ask Crowley to explain the look of horror and absolute guilt that coalesced on his features as he replied: “I happened.” 

“But… you wouldn’t do something like this…” he insisted. He’d always felt that the demon’s self-detrimental guilt was astoundingly Old Testament. Some instinct told him that his own sentiment it was the truth, and that something bigger was at play here.

Aziraphale could make out the eyes behind the sunglasses as they glanced down at the hand he held at the angel’s chest. Slowly and regretfully, the demon withdrew it, a cringing frown twisting his lips.

A sinking feeling filled Aziraphale as he remembered what happened next.

They shared no more words, but spent hours walking the crowd, distributing minor miracles where they could. At some point in the night, Crowley disappeared briefly, then returned and handed him a letter. 

“I have to go,” was all he said in a strangled voice, rough from smoke inhalation. His face was pleading, and conflicted, and helpless. It made Aziraphale’s back and chest and heart ache and itch and tingle in response. He wondered if that was the sensation humans called heartbreaking.

The letter was no more than a note, and was no explanation for what had occurred. It simply read:  
 _I have been assigned to the western colonies. Seems to be in somebody’s plan that I put the fear of Satan into them.  
Goodbye Angle. I don’t know when I’ll be back.  
PS do us a favor and destroy this immediately._

As it turned out, it would be over a century. As much as he wouldn’t admit it at the time, it was the longest, loneliness century the angel had experienced on Earth so far. The frequent “bumping into” the other angel, fallen of not, had made the sixteenth century and turn of the seventeenth very enjoyable. Having someone to talk to who knows where you’re really coming from was a novelty. He missed it. Missed _him_. 

Then he heard Crowley had gone from one revolution to another, much closer, one. So perhaps the angel had gone to France for the Crêpes, but perhaps it was only the secondary goal. But even after that reunion, they only resumed the arrangement in the form of coded letters. In fact, Crowley wouldn’t personally meet him again until upwards of fifty years later. And he’d done so to ask for Holy Water. It had made Aziraphale feel hurt, not to mention angry at the demon.

Aziraphale could feel himself returning to consciousness and he wasn’t sure he was ready to. There was something here. Something about the mystery of the fire at the Globe that he wanted to investigate further. To understand what had happened.  


  
Aziraphale floated back up to the land of the corporeal …. 

He was greeted by a demonic vision. At first, he wasn’t entirely convinced he was awake, because though they were in the bookshop, the demon was sitting across from him hiding his expression behind the brim of a hat that Aziraphale knew was tucked away in-

Oh, fuck. 

He felt his face turning red, the creeping heat crawling up from his neck.

But the demon failed to notice, or chose not to mention it. Instead, he lifted a pile of papers as he tilted the hat back and repeated in a voice much calmer than it had been in the memory-dream seconds before: “Just what the hell are you thinking?”

“Wh-What? Where did you get that? What are you talking about? Have you gone through my things?” Aziraphale started defensively.

For a split second, Crowley looked guilty, but then his mouth opened and the expression turned to offense. “Oh, I’m sssorry! Is this hat _yoursss_?” He hissed, putting his free hand to his chest in mock surprise. He then took off said hat and made a show of looking at the name in the band before putting it on his knee.  
  
The angel fidgeted.

“Right,” Crowley continued, assuming he’d won that argument. “You told me to look at your desk. Not my fault you weren’t specific enough with your instructions.” His tone returned to its customary nonchalance. “Weird space-folding magic tricks, aside, let’s get down to brass tacks: what you’re doing is the sort of thing that gets angels banished.”

In a move that surprised even himself, Aziraphale sat up and squared his shoulders. He forced down the shame he’d carried tucked away for eons with one swallow. 

“Well, perhaps if more of us, _all of us_ , had had the courage to ask the _right_ sort of questions sooner, _nobody would have had to have Fallen in the first place._ Should have been a-a general strike.”

Crowley’s jaw fell open.

Aziraphale clamped a hand over his mouth.

Neither so much as breathed as time distended around them. The space between the clicks of the clock twenty feet away seemed to lengthen and the second hand sounded like a gong.

Then Crowley was on his feet, pacing and shaking the papers in his hand as he held them out in front of him like a rabid creature that would go for his neck at any second. The hat lay forgotten on the floor. It was as if Aziraphale had disappeared.

Panic. Panic. PANIC.

“No! Nonononono, this is is not happening.” He spun and flung the papers into the cold fireplace that had appeared in the shop after its restoration before noticing there was no fire in it. With a wave of his hand, flames jumped to life, igniting the fuel instantly. He bent forward, sliding his fingers under his glasses to press over his eyes before flinging them away entirely as he straightened back up to continue his frantic pacing. 

“Four hundred years!” He burst out. “A nightmare come true!” He abruptly turned to the angel and gesticulated wildly but all that came out of his mouth were a series of strange noises.

Aziraphale stayed seated, outwardly still as he watched the chaos in front of him unfold. The papers didn’t matter. He could remember all of it without reference at this point. Nearly word-for-word. He’d been investigating these ideas since 1941. If hurling the written notes into a fire would make the fallen angel feel better, he wasn’t going to stop him.

“Crowley,” he said in an even tone. The demon had turned back around, facing the papers as they burnt out. “Crowley. This isn’t your fault.”

The shoulders hunched. He could see the demon’s long, lean fingers run into auburn locks above the black clad shoulders. The digits balled into fists against his scalp. There was another silence in the room. 

“But it is, isn’t it? You seemed so steady, so sure, before. About the Plan. Weren’t you?” His voice came to a whisper. “None of them compare to you, Aziraphale. Not a single one. You’re so much… _better_. Would you ever have done any of this if it weren’t for me?”

Did Crowley really see him as decisive? How as that even possible? He was the biggest mess of an angel in existence. Crowley had been poking fun at him for six millennia for it.

“…but do you think what I’m doing is wrong? Was averting the apocalypse _wrong_? You once told me you didn’t think I could do _anything_ wrong.”

The demon didn’t answer. His mind flew back to the moment that the heat Aziraphale fed into him had hit his stomach and he’d Known it wasn’t his manipulation that had brought Aziraphale to his side on that airbase.

“And I haven’t been. Sure, that is. Not in a very long time.” A smile crept up Aziraphale’s face despite the strain in the moment. “And when have you known me to not waver?” 

The fists loosened, then fell. “Tonight.” He answered the question in a quieter voice. “You may speak softly, Angel, but you carry a fucking flaming eternal blade.”

Aziraphale chuckled. “If I recall correctly, I gave that away.”

“The pen is mightier than the sword?” Aziraphale could hear Crowley’s temperament returning to baseline.

“Would you come sit down, so we can properly discuss this?”

Crowley had so many questions. He turned, and nervously aqueous to the request, taking a seat on the opposite side of the couch. 

“Now, is there anything you’d like me to start with? Did you read everything in the papers? Did I explain well enough what I was thinking? I’ve had to run completely on theory, which makes it rather difficult. It’s not as if I’ve had the benefit of peer review. Or any review for that matter.”

Aziraphale offered up a smile and watched as the demon relaxed farther into the couch, regaining his natural, draping, serpentine posture.

“I suppose… how long have you been toying with blasphemy, Angel? When did you start this ‘research’?”

Leaning down, Aziraphale retrieved the hat from where it had fallen from Crowley’s lap earlier. “It’s just human knowledge, floating around in books all over the planet. You’ve just got to know how to piece it together. A bit of dabbling in cosmic theories is hardly blasphemy, I should think. ”

“Tell that to Torquemata…” Crowley muttered.

He studied the hat and smiled warmly. “It’s been on my mind for about… seventy years or so, but I didn’t commit anything to paper until after last summer. After what we’d done, a little bit of theorizing felt pretty harmless.” He reached out to hand the hat back.

Crowley took it and stared at it a moment. A smile, one of those honest ones, played on his lips before transforming into the mischievous type. “How did you happen to learn human occult magic? Interdimensional space origami isn’t something you pick up from ‘Magic Tricks for Clever Boys.’”

Aziraphale grinned, happy to have impressed his friend so well. “Oh, well, you know, you couldn’t have all the fun with secret societies when they became the rage. You can have your Hellfire Club, I’ll take tea with Ascended Masters-“

“In my defense, when ole Benny Franklin invites one to a party, one doesn’t refuse.” 

Aziraphale found himself laughing again. “If you say so. Anyway, humans don’t have too much right when it comes to their relationships to each other, or how things on the greater scale work, but some are very good with their ‘hands’ and a very few more have figured out the basic mechanics of certain things.”

“Does that also apply to what they call Chakras?”

There was a pause while Aziraphale attempted to organize his thoughts. “I’m assuming you have at least been able to guess what…um, we did earlier tonight.” Was it still night? He hadn’t noticed. He hurried on. “I was blending several techniques in order to do it. It’s easier, being an angel, to accomplish some of it than it is for humans. I hadn’t had the Eureka moment until we switched bodies last summer, though.” Neither of them had known they’d even had that ability until it was suggested by the long-dead prophetess.

Crowley sat through this strange…confession? Explanation? But finally decided he needed to stop the angel, who was never very good at staying on one train of thought when he got anxious. He ran over what he’d read while Aziraphale was asleep. 

“I think I get it.” He told Aziraphale, putting the hat down and massaging his temples. He closed his eyes. “You were using meditation to hyper-focus on the Light you carry at the center of your angelic core. In order to build it up, you feed it with memory you harvest using the hypnosis you learned in order to recall the Source Light in the Silver City as well as events from the past that… generate emotional reactions. And you somehow, transferred part of your Light into me. At least temporarily.” He thought about how his corporation had responded to the transference. “The Light traveled along the chi paths to the Chakra points, and at each one, it caused a reaction based upon that point’s …function.” It was weird how they had matched up in pairs and the resulting effects from that fact was not lost on him. It would take further investigation and experimentation, and he admitted to himself that he couldn’t wait., as long as they found a way to work with that last one.

_Heart chakra: Love.  
Throat and stomach chakras: Communication and self realization.  
Third eye and sacral chakras: Truth and… pleasure.  
The root chakra: link to the physical heart of Earth.   
Finally, the crown chakra: the link to the higher spiritual plane. The link a fallen angel is banished from._

Crowley sat bolt upright, an epiphany sparking in him. “Hey, crown chakra!” His lips twisted around the old Sanskrit word: “Sahasrara. On an angel, it manifests as a halo.”

Aziraphale beamed fondly. “You do understand!”

Crowley smiled back, but there was still an apologetic confusion in his eyes. “No,” he admitted. “I see _what_ you’re doing…but _why_?”

A tightness formed in Aziraphale’s throat as he held eye contact. He opened his mouth a few times before he could make the words come out. “Because you’re my _best friend_ , Crowley. I wanted you to…be able to feel the Light again. Wholly..…Even if it is _only_ mine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Globe Theater burned down on June 13th, 1613, during a production of Henry VIII. Miraculously, nobody died in the real burning of the Globe! So chuck that up to what you will. The place was a heap of ash within an hour of a stage cannon misfiring and lighting a beam on fire. The original Globe was all wood and thatch, and the summer was dry.
> 
> See art for this chapter (and all the others) on Instagram under AspiringEccentric.
>
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	5. The Only Light I Need

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I happened”. Aziraphale’s head spun. His sudden departure. His general avoidance of getting that close again until Adam arrived and the apocalypse loomed to threaten everything anyway. It all finally made sense.
> 
> Crowley’s eyes searched that angelic face as it froze before him like some Greek statue, only the blond curls shifting in the breeze from the warming water below. 
> 
> Did I just fuck this up? His heart felt like a trapped bat in his ribs. Was I just projecting? It couldn’t all have been in my head. Say something!

_Yours is the only one I need_ , Crowley’s brain screamed….

But his jaw was clenched so hard that he couldn’t speak. His heart felt like a hummingbird and his eyes watered again. It was as if his entire body had decided to malfunction repeatedly in multiple ways in the course of a single night. He sat in this frozen state for what could have been a minute or an hour, starring into Aziraphale’s stormy blue eyes. 

_You’re a demon. How are you LIKE THIS?…this…What is this?_ It was a question he’d asked so many times in his existence, especially where Aziraphale was concerned.

When Crowley couldn’t find words, Aziraphale went on: “I’ve been giving it a lot of thought, lately, obviously. And I can’t help but come to the conclusion that maybe the reason that we’re so ‘rubbish’ -as you put it- at being what we’re supposed to be…is because it’s not all we are anymore, Crowley.”

The demon felt a jolt of electricity run through him at the implication that pulled him from his reverie.

“You mean, they’re right? We have gone native?” 

He thought of Adam. Just a kid. A kid that had stood up to Satan himself, and won. Because he’d been allowed to just be.

“What I mean is, I think we’ve _evolved_.”

“Into _what_?” 

“I…I haven’t gotten that far, yet.” The angel smiled faintly.

They still hadn’t broken their gaze.

“Do you recall when the Globe Theater caught fire?” The angel asked, seemingly out of the blue.

Crowley blinked, but didn’t look away. “Y-yeah,” he creaked.

“Is that what you were referring to a minute ago when you mentioned a four-hundred-year-old nightmare?”

His throat was suddenly very dry. His eyebrows peaked. “They’d found out,” he said before he could think better of it.

Aziraphale jawed the air vaguely again. Were they sitting closer together? When had that happened? “A-About the, ah, the _fraternizing_?”

“…about…” his head bobbed almost imperceptibly, yellow eyes searching. “…that I….” He rolled his shoulders in a sudden shudder, trying to distract himself from the fact he felt like he couldn’t breath. “Sure. Tha’s it.” He finished with a croak.

They both abruptly faced forward and sank back against the cushions.

The grandfather clock stuck five AM.

Crowley had an idea. He twirled and flipped his hat up his arm and onto his head, knowing the trick would illicit a spark of joy within his counterpart for it’s theatricality, and distract from the sudden awkwardness. He tilted his head at the angel with a grin.

“Cani take you somewhere?” He asked as he stood up and went to retrieve the sunglasses he’d so unceremoniously hurled from his person earlier.

Aziraphale glanced at the recently striking clock and back at his friend. “Now?” He asked quizzically. “It’s five in the morning.”

Crowley paused in wiping the lenses on his shirt and rolled his eyes. “Tiiime,” he growled the “i” out with a roll of his neck and shrug of this shoulders.

Aziraphale pursed his lips. “Ever the eccentric.”

The demon raised his eyebrows as he slipped the glasses into place. “Oi,” he gestured at the stacks of books and antiques in the bookshop that never sells any books in the home without a bed, and finished with a flourish of one waving hand at the angel, who was now smiling uncontrollably. “Says the proverbial pot, as he sits there dressed like the sun still doesn’t set on the British empire.”

“Alright,” Aziraphale agreed. “Where are you taking me?”

“Just some mountain top, maybe. Some _pinnacle_ with a _good_ view.”

Aziraphale side-eyed him, but smiled. “You old devil, you.”

Crowley showed his teeth. “You love it.”

….

It was still dark outside fifteen minutes later as Crowley pulled the Bentley off of Belvedere Road and into Jubilee Park without slowing down as he miracled-away the vehicle pylons with a wiggle of his fingers and Aziraphale grabbed the dashboard in surprise as the old car took the curb. The angel threw him a look but he just shrugged. The park was completely empty at this hour.

“If anyone was going to come at us about miracles, they would have done so already,” he explained. They went swinging around the children’s playground before Crowley pulled them up and parked near the International Brigade Memorial. He stepped out as Aziraphale took a breath and unlatched his fingers from the dash. After calming his heart from the car ride, he looked out of the windscreen to see the glowing lights of the London Eye sparkling before him. Being so early, it wasn’t open, but the lights always graced the skyline these days. The observation wheel had been there for twenty years, but he’d never been this close. Curiosity forced him to join the demon on the grass between the park and the Thames.

Crowley had a hand out, and fog -or at least _more_ fog- was materializing above the water and moving inland around them. It was getting thick.

“What are you doing?” Aziraphale inquired, watching as visibility dropped to about ten feet.

“Oh,” the ginger replied, taking a few paces into the fog, swirls of the white mist dancing behind him. “Just being a ‘Drama Queen of the Damned’.” There was another movement in the haze and the snap of fingers and Crowley stepped back into view in a bespoke, slim fitting modern black three piece suit with a oxblood shirt and a black satin ascot under the collar. He still wore the hat, but his hair was suddenly down around his shoulders again.

Aziraphale tried to not let his eyes go too wide. “Um, yes, but that doesn’t really explain…why the fo-“

Crowley’s inky, blackbird wings burst forth dramatically in reply before he could finish the question. The fog billowed in response. Even in their damaged state, Aziraphale thought his plumage was magnificent. The demon smirked and extended his hand to the angel.

“Be not afraid.…” He’d meant to make it sound like a joke reference, but it came out more like a plead.

Either way, it had the desired effect: Aziraphale stopped tittering and met his gaze, hints of a smile playing at the corners of his lips. Taking a quick swallow, he didn’t give himself enough time to overthink it. With nearly as little effort as it took for his lungs to inflate, or his heart to beat, he loosed his shining white wings into the world, and he took his friend’s hand.

The fog was so thick that it covered the river’s breadth and four hundred feet up into the air. Meteorologists would be bouncing theories off each other over Twitter about the event for weeks, but like so many things it would just become a weird memory people brought up at parties twenty years later, then promptly forgot about again.

But _they_ wouldn’t forget.

It had been so long since they’d flown. Dear God, it felt so good Aziraphale could almost cry. It hadn’t been very safe to fly since humans had started up about witchcraft, and then taken to the air in droves themselves. The angel missed air travel, and disliked planes more than certain flash cars. There is no sensation quite like flight. It never gets old. The loss of gravity at a peak sends the heart into palpitations when it doesn’t stop it completely. He climbed as fast as his wings could manage, then let momentum carry him another few yards. Involuntary laughter bubbled up inside and spilled over. 

He couldn’t believe they were doing this in the middle of the biggest city in England. 

_Only Crowley_ , he thought to himself.

The lights of the Farris wheel flowed through the fog like color-changing stars. Every so often, he could see Crowley fly past. He was smiling so much his cheeks hurt. The warm sticky-ness prompted a want to free-fall right down into the water, but the current was powerful beneath the deceptive calm of the surface, and besides, the runoff of the city left something to be desired as a swimming hole. Eventually, back aching from effort, he called out in order to locate Crowley.

A yell from the direction of the Eye had him popping out of the surface of the fog to find the demon perched on top of the highest silvery observation car about ten yards away. The faint pink light that portended daybreak tinted everything now in an unearthly color between purple and orange and it made his copper hair glow. 

Aziraphale beat his wings powerfully, causing the top of the fog to recede from him in waves. 

“The water just reminded me of something!” he called.

“Hmmm?” Crowley simply replied, watching the angel bob in the air. The twilight in the sky behind him lit up the wisps of impossibility light blond hair that were now crowned in tiny water droplets. The fog below him, lit in the sunlight, was like the tops of clouds. Crowley’s cool demeanor was invalidated by a stupidly-ecstatic grin, but he couldn’t care less. He dropped back to his elbows and gestured to the space beside him. 

After a briefly worried glance at what of the city skyline he could see, Aziraphale rose slightly higher and joined him. The carriages were much bigger when viewed from the top. Crowley lay on his side with his head propped up on a hand and there was still plenty of room. He slowly lowered himself down and sat with his knees slightly bent on the mirrored surface, taking a glance at the reflection of the pair of them with their wings folded leisurely behind them. 

Had it really been the shortest night of the year? It felt like they’d been together forever.

“At some point in all this, I mentioned that I had an idea of what we can do now, but then we got distracted.”

“Love a good distraction, me,” Crowley said through his Cheshire grin. He twitched his feet where they hung over the curved edge of the carriage.

Aziraphale felt his cheeks tint, but he found he smiled instead of tutting at the flirtation. 

“As I was saying, I think I pointed this out before, but the only people who seem to be at all in a huff about what we did are in the bureaucracy. I certainly didn’t see Satan himself at your sham of a trial and you said The Metatron didn’t Show up to represent Her have at mine, just a very miffed Gabriel.”

There was new defiant glint to his eyes these days whenever the angel said his former supervisor’s name and it gave Crowley a spark of pride as well as a pang of concern. Remembering Gabriel’s expression in that moment stirred a rage in his stomach that he had to put some effort into burying. It had taken every fiber of what self control he did possess (as well as screaming at his hind brain reminding it that everyone in that room was seeing him as the angel in that moment) to keep himself from reaching through that swirling Hellfire and yanking that smug fuck in by the shirt collar.

“Crowley,” he continued. “I don’t think they care.”

Crowley tilted his head a bit, frowning. “Not sure how to feel about that.” He turned one palm up, then the other. “One hand: we’re all good. ‘Nother: we didn’t even leave a lasting ache in their balls.”

Aziraphale lifted a finger and smiled. “But we got what we wanted, didn’t we? More time for Earth. For people.”

The demon bobbed his head, conceding the point. When the angel had that open honest expression of love, ( even if it were just for the humans and Earth) on his face, Crowley didn’t think he would be able to deny him anything.

“And, isn’t that, well, what we were supposed to do?” 

Crowley squinted in half comprehension. “Cause trouble?” he supplied.

Aziraphale laughed. “Yes, for you, I suppose that’s right. I was told to guard the Garden, protect the humans. Those are the only orders I have ever received directly from Her. Ever after Enoch Ascended, every dispatch has been through Gabriel, relayed from The Metatron, and probably five secretaries.” He met Crowley’s eyes. “Sorry to be so trite, but I think _this_ is exactly how it’s supposed to be, we just got sidetracked.”

“You mean, the assignments? Souls? Fomenting? Hell’s been sort of making it up as it’s gone along. You mean to say that ‘s all been…bullshit?”

Aziraphale flinched at the profanity, but cocked an eyebrow and smiled a moment later. “Perhaps? Or at least that the messages were misinterpreted. Crowley, you know how I’d said that the feeling of love is stronger, and scattered all over now? As if the humans somehow Know what they nearly lost?”

Crowley vaguely recalled this. He sat up, raising a knee to prop an arm on.

“Well, what if I go back to my original orders? The humans love Earth. We’ve been following what our superiors thought we should be doing for the last six thousand years. ‘Messing about’ with the humans heads -as Adam would say- like they’re a bunch of kids we have to control for what we consider their own good, but is really just for our boss’ perceived benefit. None of it was ever truly for them, was it? None of it was for…” he waved his hand in the direction of St. James Park. “For the Garden. If Heaven and Hell still feel a need to interfere…maybe instead of being emissaries for them, we could be… diplomats for Earth?”

The angel was really working himself up in a tizzy about this idea and Crowley couldn’t help but feel it, too. _Original orders, aye? Weren’t my original orders to make trouble?_ Or should he be looking back to before that? He could remember the ones She’d given him just about as well as he could remember what his original name was. Sometimes, there was something on the tip of his tongue. Something that felt like J, but he could never be sure. And why should he do anything for Her, anyway? 

…But, what if he just did it for the angel? For all they had found on Earth? …He’d have to remember what It was, first.

He recalled standing on a hilltop on the Apennine Peninsula overlooking Rome as the empire toppled in the achingly slow way massive civilizations often do. There was a whiff of corruption hanging like smoke that Crowley’s demon sense could pick up on if he focused, the same way Aziraphale zeroed in on love. Aziraphale had a sadness around him that day which Crowley wasn’t as attuned to in those early times. Aziraphale had said that when he removed humanity’s ability to harm each other, he always found that he could love all of them, even if he couldn’t like them all.

“Infinitely lovable, finitely likeable.” Crowley had summed up in reply, unwilling to admit, at the time, that he could relate.

 _He’s absolutely fucking adorable_ , Crowley thought now, watching the light of the nearly rising sun change from pink to orange on his face and across his cream colored coat. And he’s bloody RIGHT, too.

“Adam pointed out many topics of concern when arguing about The End. And I’ve looked into all of them. I’ve ventured onto the internet and through scientific pay walls to read up on it and, out of all the things he’s worried about…. Crowley, they need our help, not our control or our manipulation. Maybe my help, your creativity? You’re good at making people give into temptations. Does the temptation have to be for a sin?” Aziraphale took a breath and tried to slow down. 

He made a wide gesture at the horizon before them.

“They had a garden. A huge, unfathomable one and it’s _falling apart_. Part of that is our fault. It’s all collapsing around them because… they just…they didn’t know what they had.” Aziraphale’s eyes became sorrowful. There was a shift and suddenly he was talking about two things simultaneously. “Now, they’re waking up. It can’t be _too late_ , can it?”

Crowley reached out and caught one of his angel’s twitching hands. It was so warm. “Of course it isn’t.”

The sun finally broke free of the curve of the Earth and what could be seen of the city below and the waves of the river, glittered gold. The fog threw the light, the mist glowing around them. For a moment, they sat quietly, appreciating the splendor.

The alarm clock he’d set for himself in Crowley’s mind chimed. 

“The holy water. It wasn’t to protect me,” he sputtered in a husky voice before he could stop himself. “That fire at the Globe? Hastur set it. For you.”

Aziraphale’s hand tightened on his as he looked up in shock. “Wh-What?”

“Holy Water is the only substance that can extinguish Hellfire.” His heart ached as it pounded in his ears and his back itched between his wings. 

“They’d never cared about me before, why all-of-a-sudden-“

Crowley moved closer. Aziraphale’s warm cheek beckoned for his palm, but he just balled his hand after reaching halfway to that confused face, and let it fall. “Oh, for Earth’s sake, do I have to spell it out for you so you can read in a damn book?” he asked, his hands starting to shake. “They knew we were meeting. I was worried! Worried they’d found out-“ he took a deep breath, lowering his anxiety-riddled voice. “How much I love you, Angel.”

 _“I happened.”_ Aziraphale’s head spun. His sudden departure. His general avoidance of getting that close again until Adam arrived and the apocalypse loomed to threaten everything anyway. It all finally made sense.

Crowley’s eyes searched that angelic face as it froze before him like some Greek statue, only the blond curls shifting in the breeze from the warming water below. 

_Did I just fuck this up?_ His heart felt like a trapped bat in his ribs. _Was I just projecting? It couldn’t all have been in my head. Say something!_

“And ‘s fine if you don’t feel the same. I’ll still help you. I get it if you think you’re people-or -“ he found himself stammering.

The hat blew off Crowley’s head in a gust of wind. Aziraphale snatched it out of the air in a preternaturally skilled move like it was the second most important thing in the world to him and grasped it to his chest as tears welled up in his eyes. Without knowing he was doing it, his celestial voice entwined with his corporeal one:

“FUCK THEM. THERE ARE NO SIDES. WE DON’T NEED THEIR PERMISSION TO EXIST.” 

An electric chill ran up the spine of everyone in London and a sudden burst of self-respect and determination swelled in the population. The number of people quitting jobs that week spiked.

“What I mean to say is… I love you, too.”

Before he knew what he was doing, Crowley’s arms circled around Aziraphale’s chest. He dragged his shades off with one finger over the white clad shoulder as he leaned forward, and he tucked his face into the warm crook of his neck to feel the heat of his angel’s Light bleeding into him. He’d wanted to feel the softness there on his cheeks and lips for at least two thousand years, but who was keeping track? _Time_ , the back of his brain scoffed. But his throat tightened and he was afraid to open his eyes because he wanted to stay in this moment as he inhaled the smell of old leather books, vanilla chai, and angel.

Then, he felt the comforting weight of Aziraphale’s arms as they closed around his shoulders, carefully avoiding his wings. To make things easier, he tucked them away. He felt the air shift as Aziraphale’s wings bent to surround them, shielding them inside a glowing white cocoon. Protective. Just as they had been when they’d first met.

“Yours is the only Light I need,” he found himself confessing the sentiment from earlier aloud, just under Aziraphale’s jaw. He didn’t mind expressing it now, he only wished it hadn’t come out in what sounded to him like a sob. The embrace tightened in response, hat forgotten and crushed between them as fingers slid up into his hair.

Words were failing Aziraphale, so in response, he focused on how he felt. 

And it fed the Light.

And he channeled it into the being in his arms. 

_We’ll figure this out. We’ve always been good at figuring things out_. Pulling back, he forced the demon from the cozy hiding place between his jacket collar and collarbone. He moved his hands to the sides of his neck and stroked his thumbs up over his sharp jaw bones. The now naked, butter amber eyes blinked with an unasked question. Aziraphale answered it by lowering his lips to Crowley’s, and then letting the enthusiasm of his demon do the rest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only one chapter left, but I am trying to work out a sequel in my head. It’s just figuring out the order of events that’s complicated, and trying to find time for writing while getting my “day job” business whipped back into shape after 2020.
> 
> And of course: Pics or it didn’t happen! See Instagram for illustrations for every chaper of this fic here.
>
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> 


	6. Blackbird Fly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Aziraphale turned around to look up at him, his face was beaming with pure love and fondness, as if this new element in their relationship had slipped onto his heart like a glove. Could it really be that easy?

The shuffling platypus creature waddled into the mirror sphere at the top floor of the tallest office building in the Silver City for the usual custodial duties of Tuesday morning. Heaven does not have dust. However, a sense of moral superiority can really get into the fiber of things, and particles of inflated righteousness fell from beings like Gabriel like dandruff.

“Not my department,” the beak on the scrubbing animal mimicked in a surprisingly accurate imitation of the Archangel’s timbre. They sat back on their duck-like feet and took a puff from their cigar. One of their silver wings flicked dust from a furry shoulder. “Your department being’ ‘pricks taller than six feet and think they run the place’?” They leaned on their mop. 

The Janitor was supposed to have been tossed out with the reject designs for recycling back before time started. Joke was on them. The creature had been gifted thumbs and would be damned if that waffle-tailed, quadruped git of a cousin of theirs was going to get to exist just because that tail made more sense than their own fox tail. They had snorted, climbed out of the bin and discovered that the angels found it easy to ignore them if they leaned on a mop. God noticed, and gave Her consent mere hours after they had made their escape. They liked to think it was granted due to their cleverness, but it may have just as easily been attributed to their cuteness levels.

Casting beady eyes around the room, something felt different. Putting aside the cleaning implement (gravity did not work the same in the room so the custodial cart rested just as safe on the side of the sphere as at the bottom), they waddled to the middle of the room and stared up into the whirl overhead. There was a flash of golden light deep in the tunnel.

A folded parchment floated down like a leaf and landed at their feet. The Janitor eyeballed it criticality for a moment. In their entire existence, they had never seen anything emerge from the inverted light whirlpool. Shaking a dust cloth out from a pocket in their fur, they carefully used it to pick up the paper.

A gold wax seal with the all seeing eye peered at them from the letter. They flicked their gaze up again. “Bit pretentious, ain’t it? Suppose I should consider the source.…” But it was said with a smile. They turned it over and read the address. The little white spots that served as eyebrows bobbed up. “Oh really? And I have to deliver this, huh?” There was no reply from above, but they heaved a heavy sigh and shoved the letter in an apron pocket. “I gotta do everything ‘round here.”

The duck feet made little squeaking noises on the perfectly polished surface as they made their way back out the door, leaving the cleaning cart behind to reflect into infinity until they came back for it.

In the back end of the janitorial closet, there was a small door. The Janitor was the only one with a key. Despite the size of the door, the stairwell on the other side had angel proportional stairs. If the creature had had teeth to grind, they would have. Instead, they grumbled about presumptuous architecture and size discrimination for the tenth time since starting their shift.

They glowered at the servants’ stairway and its well lit, white sterile glow, which appeared to emanate from both nowhere and everywhere. Sitting on the top landing, they relit what looked to be a stogie but could really be anything. They took a deep breath and steeled themselves for the descent.

“This is going to take bloody _forever_.”

……

Back on the ground….

They landed and folded their wings away with just enough fog cover left not to be seen by the few early jogging enthusiasts who were using the Queen’s Walk. Still, the sight of two men in what could best be described as evening attire strolling out of a wall of mist at seven AM, when the only thing on the other side of that wall was the largest river in England, was a bit odd. Crowley’s sunglasses were forgotten in his breast pocket and anyone noticing the strange yellow eyes in the head of the taller figure was likely to stumble before their brain decided he was just a bloke with a bizarre choice in contact lenses.

Crowley couldn’t stop himself from slipping his arms around the angel’s ribs from behind and once again finding the warm spot in the crook of his neck. Now that he knew he was allowed, even wanted, there.

“What on Earth are you doing?” Aziraphale chuckled, reaching back to set the black fedora on his head.

“Oh, I live here, now,” Crowley replied without withdrawing.

“Oh, really?”

He nodded into the warmth before reluctantly straightening up. “You give a demon a cookie, expect possession.”  
  
“I’ll have to keep that in mind, then,” the angel replied.

 _Was that a hint of salaciousness? The wonders never cease with this one,_ Crowley thought. He got another surprise when he noticed heat rise to his cheeks in response. What in the world? 

When Aziraphale turned around to look up at him, his face was beaming with pure love and fondness, as if this new element in their relationship had slipped onto his heart like a glove. Could it really be that easy? 

“You really are so-”

Crowley cocked an eyebrow. “Evil? Dastardly?”

 _Pathetically obsessed?_ His brain offered.

“Beautiful,” Aziraphale decided, the corners of his eyes crinkling to accompany the bright smile.

Crowley was at a loss for words for a second. He swallowed dumbly before cracking an unbelieving grin. “Flatterer,” he scoffed, turning to open the passenger door. 

The angel continued to smile knowingly as he climbed in and watched as the demon crossed in front of the car, one hand scratching the back of his neck sheepishly while the other fished in his pocket for his shades.

Aziraphale had known. Of course he had. He would have had to completely block his angelic senses as well as his earthly ones not to have noticed. But knowledge and acceptance may as well have been crafted on opposite sides of the universe. It takes an astonishingly small amount of effort to rationalize something and write it off when one is afraid of repercussions. 

But then the world hadn’t ended. 

And he had spent so much time mining his memories and thoughts to inspire the Light. 

And there was a fairly frequent common theme within those moments.

And even if they still felt like they were waiting for another shoe to drop, as soon as the words had fallen from Crowley’s lips, it had been impossible for Aziraphale’s heart to refute. 

Slithering in behind the wheel of the Bentley, Crowley slid his glasses on.

He tilted his head back and tipped it toward Aziraphale. 

“Gee, Brain, what are we going to do tonight?”

The angel gave a gleeful wiggle and Crowley was shocked when the reference didn’t go over his head. “Same thing we do every night, Crowley: try to save the world.”

Crowley raised his eyebrows. “Well, you know me: always up for a little trouble.”

An unusual thing happened as the old black car peeled out of Jubilee Park and into London’s early morning traffic. It wouldn’t seem out of the ordinary to anyone watching the anachronistic car from the sidewalk, but to the occupants it was a powerful sign that things were indeed, evolving. The stereo clicked on, and an album that had been in the car since February, unopened, was slipped into the CD player. 

Unaltered, serene notes floated from the windows. Recognizing the tune by osmosis from simply _living through_ the last century, Aziraphale reached across and took Crowley’s hand with an unsurpressable smile, and the demon couldn’t help but grin when the lyrics began:

_Blackbird singing in the dead of night  
Take these broken wings and learn to fly  
All your life  
You were only waiting for this moment to arise_

_Blackbird singing in the dead of night  
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see  
All your life  
You were only waiting for this moment to be free_

_Blackbird fly, blackbird fly_  
Into the light of a dark black night  
Blackbird fly, blackbird fly…

_Into the Light of a dark black night…._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have some Art!
>
>> [ ](https://www.instagram.com/p/CMLFZxlHaJX/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading)
>> 
>> [ View this post on Instagram ](https://www.instagram.com/p/CMLFZxlHaJX/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading)
>> 
>> [A post shared by Sherlock's Bloodhound (@aspiringeccentric)](https://www.instagram.com/p/CMLFZxlHaJX/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading)
> 
> That’s it for this part of the story. I hope to have the sequel plotted later this month and hopefully enough of it written to start publishing it by the end of April. I’m fairly certain it will be longer than this, and depending on story arch, could come out in two parts to make this a three part series. 
> 
> Please comment! I want to know people’s favorite bits and if there’s questions that you really want answered!
> 
> ………and because everyone loves a post-credits Easter egg:
> 
> Before time began, an angel with eyes like twin harvest moons played with something in the midnight blue fabric of his sleeve. Just a tiny creature he’d scraped together from the rejected remains in a recycling receptacle beside a workbench when no one was looking. What was the harm in slipping a wisp of the Spark into his little creation? It was a bit odd, perhaps, to look at, but ingenious in its efficiency and sleek design. Currently, it was wound around his thin forearm, happy to absorb the heat that it found there. The angel could barely resist the urge to show it off, even though he knew he could get into trouble if anyone found out that it even existed.  
> “Don’t worry,” he whispered as he walked out of the Creative Department after his assistant managerial shift ended. “I’ll take good care of you, Crawly.”


End file.
